CERN’s photo archives contain hundreds of thousands of images, among them hidden gems. Many of them are beautiful, while others are surprising or downright bizarre. For a long time, these photos lay forgotten in filing cabinets, stored on film or slides. Since 2014, a major digitisation project has been under way, bringing these pieces of the Laboratory’s heritage back into the light.
The idea quickly arose to put some of the photos on display for the public. This led to the creation of the photo exhibition ‘Explorers of science, past and present’. First presented at the Bains des Pâquis in Geneva in the spring of 2025, this exhibition is now on display at the Esplanade des Particules until the end of the year.
Through around forty photographs from the 1950s to the 1980s, the exhibit tells the story of CERN’s scientific and human endeavour: incredible machines, ultra-precise work and collaboration between scientists, as well as scenes of joy and whimsy, passion and humour – in short, everything that defined CERN back then and continues to do so today.
If you’d like to journey further into CERN’s history, you can explore the CERN photo archive database. You’ll see that a lot of information is still missing in the database. You can help to improve it by providing additional information or captions. Click on the “Suggest a caption” link on the right above your chosen photo.
If you have any interesting historical photographs relating to CERN, please send them to Heritage.Committee@cern.ch, observing these rules if possible:
- Digital version with a resolution of at least 1440p;
- With a caption in French or English that answers the questions “who, what, when, where, how”.
Thank you!
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This announcement is taken from this article published in April 2025.