Photographic archives of Polish immigration in the coal basin of northern France in the 1920s and 1930s. After a short spell as an underground miner, Kasimir Zgorecki turned to professional photography and in 1924 took over his brother-in-law's studio in Rouvroy, in the Pas-de-Calais. His career, mainly centred on portraits of the Polish population of the region, whose immigration was linked to the coal and steel heavy industry, quickly became flourishing. He invested notably in identity photographs, which had become compulsory on the cards of foreigners working in France in 1917, an activity that assured him an important source of income: he strategically used a single glass negative for several portraits, posing his sitters in front of a neutral background. By contrast, the style of his family portraits is often more staged. Working in his studio, outdoors or at his clients' homes, he photographed the Polish community on various occasions, providing work of an anthropological nature. This book brings together more than 150 photographs covering the period from 1924 to 1947 and addresses the role of the portrait studio in the 1920s and 1930s; this bilingual edition, reflecting the course of the exhibition, aims to be the first in-depth study of his work.