The world's greatest photography flea market returns to this small French town this June

A visitor examines the cameras on display at the Bièvres international photography fair, on June 3, 1973. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images) — A visitor looks at the cameras on sale at Bièvres Photo Fair in 1973. The outdoor flea market remains one of its main attractions, as it opens for its 62nd year this summer (Image credit: Getty Images)

There are camera fairs, and then there's Bièvres. Now in its 62nd year, the Foire Internationale de la Photo at Bièvres, France, is the kind of event that serious photographers put in their calendars every January, but might not tell too many people about. Word gets around anyway: visitors now come from across Europe and beyond, all united by their love of cameras and photography.

The setup is straightforward enough. On June 6-7, 2026, the small Essonne commune of Bièvres, 20km south of Paris, becomes the capital of photography for a weekend. Entry is free, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the range of what's on offer is quite extraordinary.

The market: where the real action is

For most visitors, the secondhand and antique photography market is the main event. Stallholders range from serious specialist dealers to enthusiastic collectors clearing out a spare room, and the gap between those two ends of the spectrum is where the real bargains tend to hide. This is the place to spend a Saturday afternoon turning over wooden field cameras, peering through the viewfinders of vintage Leicas, haggling over a job lot of expired film, or discovering a print process you'd never heard of before.

Article continues below

The sheer variety is part of the pleasure. It's not just cameras and lenses, though there are plenty of those. You'll also find advertising materials, travel photographs, family albums, cinema equipment, darkroom supplies and more here. It's photography in the broadest sense, treated as both a technical practice and a cultural artefact.

A seated vendor gestures animatedly while discussing a camera with a standing visitor, a camera and several lenses laid out on the table between them. — (Image credit: A Quémy)

A table crowded with antique cameras spanning more than a century, from brass-fitted wooden plate cameras and bellows folders to mid-century Nikons and a collection of large-format lenses. — (Image credit: Gerald Schneck)

A vendor stands behind a long table blanketed in vintage SLR cameras, lenses and accessories, including a Pentacon, laid out on a blue cloth. — (Image credit: Gerald Schneck)

Alongside the secondhand market, a new equipment and services market brings together camera brands, film suppliers, printers and other industry players showing their latest offerings. Whether you're after a new roll film scanner or just want to stock up on darkroom paper, it's worth a walk through.

The artists' market, meanwhile, adds another dimension entirely. This is where photographers sell and show their own work, and on Sunday morning a jury, chaired this year by Bruno Dubreuil, art critic, exhibition curator and professor of photography and art history, will visit each booth. Awards are presented on Sunday afternoon, which gives the whole thing a fun, competitive edge.

Guest of honor: Jean-Christophe Béchet

Each year the fair invites a significant photographer to show work across the town, and in 2026 that honour goes to Jean-Christophe Béchet, who's lived and worked in Paris since 1990. His practice is notably restless: black-and-white and color, film and digital, 35mm and medium format, Polaroid and what he calls "photographic accidents". He's interested less in mastering a single tool than in finding the right one for each project.

Béchet will be showing two exhibitions. At the recently renovated Grange aux Fraises, Savage Materiality explores photography as a physical, tactile medium. "I have always loved fragile, random photographs," he says. "Those that blend technique and improvisation, the precision of framing and the freedom of light. Not obeying the rules but knowing them in order to bend them, to subject them to one's imagination." The photograph, he suggests, becomes through the developed print "an art of materiality": something more object than image.

His second exhibition, Macadam Colour, at the Maison des Photographes et de l'Image, brings together 30 years of color street photography. Covering architecture and human behaviour, the built environment and the people who inhabit it, it's a body of work that captures, as the fair puts it, "the spirit of an era and the identity of a place".

Talks and workshops

The Bièvres Encounters programme runs across both days, with talks and presentations from photographers including François Abbe, Thierry Chantegret, Laura Bonnefous, Eric Delamarre and José Nicolas, alongside specialists in technique, equipment and travel photography. Each session includes a Q&A.

A stallholder at the artists' market holds up a print for a visitor to inspect, with more prints clipped to a red backdrop behind them. — (Image credit: Nancy Pratt)

A visitor in a baseball cap examines framed photographic prints at an artist's booth, with colour and black-and-white works displayed across a glass-topped table. — (Image credit: Gerald Schneck)

Two young women study a table densely covered in vintage 35mm film cameras, one pointing at a particular model while a third visitor browses in the background. — (Image credit: Gerald Schneck)

Juste un Labo will be running a mobile darkroom on site, with black-and-white development and printing workshops every two hours, a Saturday portrait session using a box camera, and a Sunday photowalk. Booking is recommended at justeunlabo.fr/bievres from 7 May.

There's also a pop-up studio on the Sunday, run by Photoclub members with support from AllPages Epson Photo Expert, where you can leave with a free professional print. And if you'd like to take something of the fair's history home with you, there's a canvas tote bag featuring the poster from the 1973 fair, available for €8.

Bièvres is 20km from central Paris and 17km from the Porte d'Orléans, accessible via the A6/A10 or the D-906. Free parking is available on Saturday afternoon and Sunday at the Burospace site, with free shuttle buses running to the fair. It's also reachable by RER C. The fair runs on Saturday June 6 from 1pm to 7pm and Sunday June 7 from 8am to 6pm. Entry is free throughout. Full programme and details at foirephoto-bievre.com.

Tom May is a freelance writer and editor specializing in art, photography, design and travel. He has been editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. He has also worked for a wide range of mainstream titles including The Sun, Radio Times, NME, T3, Heat, Company and Bella.