Christie's in Paris is preparing to sell a collection that traces the full arc of French photography, assembled over decades by Roger Therond, who edited the magazine Paris Match for half a century. More than 350 photographs will be offered across three sessions on 13 and 14 November, with an online sale running 6 to 17 November alongside Paris Photo, the world's largest photography fair.

The timing is deliberate. France is marking 200 years since Nicéphore Niépce produced what is widely regarded as the oldest surviving photograph made with a camera, a view from a window at Le Gras from 1826 or 1827. Therond's holdings span that history, from 19th-century pioneers such as Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Édouard Baldus and Eugène Atget to 20th-century figures including Man Ray, Dora Maar, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, several of whom were friends of the collector.

While Therond's day job dealt in current events, his collecting pursued a different side of the medium. He valued photography for its power to open up worlds that would otherwise stay hidden, and he built the collection slowly, work by work, over a lifetime. The sale is presented as a tribute to a man who championed the medium's standing as an art form.

One lot mattered to him more than most. Man Ray's Le Baiser, a close-up of two faces about to kiss made around 1930-31, carries an estimate of 250,000 to 350,000 euros. Therond used to urge his children to look at it more than once, turning over the different identities the two sitters might hold, and to let their eyes wander to the unexpected figure in the background. The image, with the photographer Lee Miller among its sitters, has become one of the most recognisable photographs of its era.

The collection also includes early nude studies by Auguste Belloc, a seascape by Le Gray, Jacques Henri Lartigue's seaside portrait of Guitty at Biarritz, and an 1862 Alpine scene by Auguste-Rosalie Bisson. Together, the three sales amount to one of the most wide-ranging single-owner photography offerings to reach the Paris market in years.