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Arts et Métiers PHOTO-Graphiques: The Quest for Identity in French Photography between the Two World Wars

Yusuke Isotani The Graduate Center, City University of New York

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ARTS ET MÉTIERS PHOTO-GRAPHIQUES:

THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY IN FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

by

YUSUKE ISOTANI

A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York

2019

ii

© 2019 YUSUKE ISOTANI All Rights Reserved

iii

Arts et Métiers PHOTO-Graphiques: The Quest for Identity in French Photography between the Two World Wars

by

Yusuke Isotani

This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Art History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date Romy Golan

Chair of Examining Committee

Date Rachel Kousser

Executive Officer

Supervisory Committee:

Maria Antonella Pelizzari Siona Wilson Christian Joschke

THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

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Abstract

Arts et Métiers PHOTO-graphiques:

The Quest for Identity in French Photography between the Two World Wars

by

Yusuke Isotani

Advisers: Professors Romy Golan and Maria Antonella Pelizzari

This dissertation examines the evolution of photography in France between the two

World Wars by analyzing the seminal graphic art magazine Arts et métiers graphiques (1927-

1939). This bi-monthly periodical was founded by Charles Peignot (1897-1983), the artistic director of the largest manufacturer of typefaces in interwar France, Deberny et Peignot. Arts et métiers graphiques has been recognized in previous literature as one of the principal vehicles for the modernization of photography in France, primarily because it functioned as an essential conduit for the radical practices developed outside the country. The interwar period is regarded as the watershed in the history of photography. Avant-garde artists and photographers not only established photography’s own expressions but also liberated the medium from its aspiration for high art advocated by Pictorialism by expanding its uses in and as new media. Arts et métiers graphiques has been recognized as a catalyst for this transformation of photography in France. However, this study argues, contrary to such reputation, Arts et métiers graphiques represented a juste-milieu, and even arrière-garde attitude toward photography in interwar France. Instead of revolutionizing photography, the magazine encouraged the medium’s legitimization as a form of high art, combining

Pictorialist tenets and modernist understanding of photography.

v

I examine the emergence and evolution of this attitude by considering photography’s changing relationship with the contemporary development of graphic arts and media.

Photography was first introduced to Arts et métiers graphiques around 1930 as an essential element for the modernization of graphic practices such as publicity and book designs.

However, because of the magazine’s focus on the aesthetic and formalist aspects of graphic arts, photography soon came to be appreciated for its own visual beauty and quality of execution, rather than for its function in graphic design. Accordingly, Arts et métiers graphiques started to promote photography as an autonomous artistic practice independent of graphic contexts over the course of the 1930s.

The break with past art’s conventions and reliance on graphic media have been defined as two essential backdrops of photography’s revolution in the interwar period. However, Arts et métiers graphiques proves that this schematic understanding did not really fit into France.

This dissertation thus reveals another aspect of photography’s modern evolution overshadowed by, but coinciding with, the avant-gardes’ radicalism.

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Acknowledgment

This dissertation would not have been completed without the support of many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor Romy

Golan. Her concise but thought-provoking feedbacks always helped me improve my argument.

Without her encouragement and patient mentorship, this dissertation would not have taken shape. Maria Antonella Pelizzari was more than my second reader but the advisor in the history of photography. Taking her class of interwar printed matters and photography in the fall of 2012 determined my scholarly path. I also greatly appreciate the readers in my dissertation committee, Siona Wilson and Christian Joschke, both provided truly inspiring comments. The latter’s authentic French voice made this dissertation legitimate.

I cannot thank enough my art history professors in Japan, who gave me an essential academic foundation for surviving long Ph.D. student life in the United States. Eiko

Wakayama first introduced me to art history. Hiroshige Okada always helped me organize ideas. And, Tsukasa Kõdera, my advisor at Osaka University, not only continuously supported my study but also taught me valuable lessons on pursuing an academic career.

This project would not have even started without two people who first encouraged me to study in the United States. Running much distance ahead of me, Hiroko Ikegami showed me the way I should—and want to—go. Joachim Pissarro’s familial reception, sense of humor, and academic inputs always eased my worries for survival.

I was deeply inspired and encouraged by many scholars and friends, especially Max

Bonhomme, Kristof van Gansen, Alise Tifentale, Sooran Choi, and Yuri Yoshida. A number of archivists, librarians, curators, and gallerists in the United States, Germany, and France

vii offered me kind assistance. I would like to express my gratitude, in particular, to Martine

Boussoussou, Elise Barzun, Susan Anderson, Marc Barbey, and Dominique Versavel. I am also grateful to the generous fellowships and grants offered by Joan and Stanford Alexander

Award (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), Suntory Foundation, and Konosuke Matsushita

Foundation, which enabled me to stay long enough in Europe to conduct archival research.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family for their encouragement and support. My parents Kazue and Hiroyuki Isotani never stopped believing in their son. My sister Yuri Isotani first opened my eyes to the world outside Japan. Kazumi and Toyohiko Iida, my parents-in-low, also patiently waited for me to complete this dissertation. The only regret I have is that I could not show this work to Kazumi. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to

Minami Iida Isotani, my wife and best friend. She had to deal with many difficult situations while I was writing this dissertation. But she always calmly stood by me, which enabled me to be myself and find a way back to the right track every time I felt lost and alone in a long writing process.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Photography for the Art of Graphics: An Aestheticized Reception of Avant-Garde 24

Charles Peignot, Deberny et Peignot, and Arts et métiers graphiques 26

Innovating Typography in France 39

From Communication to Visual Aesthetics 57

Chapter 2 Reading Photography, Looking at Typography: The Interaction of Text and Image in Photographie, 1930 75

The Conception of Photographie 81

Reading Photographie 101

Looking at Typography 116

Maurice Cloche’s Alphabet: The Reciprocity of Photography and Typography 119

International Dissemination and Afterlife of Photographie 127

Chapter 3 Separating Photo from Graphie: A Shift from Art Photography to the Art of Photography in the Mid-1930s 130

A Rappel à l’ordre in Photography 132

Toward a Subjective Objectif 144

Separating PHOTO from GRAPHIE 169

For the Education of Amateurs 176

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Chapter 4 Displaying Photography and Graphic Art: Charles Peignot and Two Expositions internationales, 1936-1937 193

The Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine 1936 197

Connection with Photography 1839-1937 222

Another Exposition Internationale in 1937: Peignot’s Synthesis of Graphisme 239

Conclusion 251

Selected Bibliography 259

Appendix 280

Illustrations 292

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List of Illustrations

Figure I-1. Cover of Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927).

Figure I-2. Rogi André, Portrait of Charles Peignot, 1929.

Figure I-3. Cover of Photographie, published as Arts et métiers graphiques 16 (March 1930).

Figure 1-1. Advertisement of Studio Deberny et Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 15 (January 1930): 933.

Figure 1-2. Georges Auriol, specimens of Auriol, released by G. Peignot et Fils, 1901.

Figure 1-3. Page layout by Alexei Brodvitch for Pierre Mac Orlan, “Graphisme,”Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 648–649.

Figure 1-4. Jan Tschichold, “Qu’est ce que la nouvelle typographie,” Arts et métiers graphiques 19 (September, 1930): 46-47.

Figure 1-5. Typographic compositions by Karel Teige, Arts et métiers graphiques 4 (April 1928): 245.

Figure 1-6. Jan Tschichold, poster design for Laster der Menschheit (The Vice of Humanity, directed by Rudolf Meinert in 1927), Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 695 (bottom right).

Figure 1-7. El Lissitzky, poster design for the Soviet art exhibition, Zurich, Kustgewergemuseum, 1929, Arts et métiers graphiques 12 (July 1929): 754 (top right).

Figure 1-8. Herbert Bayer, cover design of Die Neue Linie, Arts et métiers graphiques 20 (November 1930): IX (bottom left).

Figure 1-9. Josef Pecsi, Excerpts from Photo und Publizität (1930), Arts et métiers graphiques 20 (November 1930): VIII.

Figure 1-10. Cover of Gebrauchstraphik 1 (1924).

Figure 1-11. El Lissitzky, Photomural of Soviet Pavilion, Pressa, Cologne, 1928.

Figure 1-12. El Lissitzky, Catalogue of Soviet Pavilion, Pressa, Cologne, 1928.

Figure 1-13. Paul Renner, Futura, released by Bauer typefoundry, 1927.

Figure 1-14. Lyonel Feininger, Cathedral of the Future, 1919.

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Figure 1-15. “L’œil du bibliophile,” Arts et métiers graphiques 3 (February 1928): 188-189.

Figure 1-16. A. M. Cassandre, advertisement panel of VU, 1928, photo by André Kertész.

Figure 1-17. “Actualité graphique,” Arts et métiers graphiques 4 (March 1928): 264-265.

Figure 1-18. A. M. Cassandre, Bifur, released by Deberny et Peignot, 1929.

Figure 1-19. A. M. Cassandre, poster of L'Intransigéant, 1925.

Figure 1-20. Charles Peignot, Sphinix, released by Deberny et Peignot, 1925.

Figure 1-21. A. M. Cassandre, Acier, released by Deberny et Peignot, 1931.

Figure 1-22. Marcel Jacno, Film, released by Deberny et Peignot, 1933.

Figure 1-23. Maximilien Vox, Divertissements typographiques 1 (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1928).

Figure 1-24. Book cover compositions, Divertissements typographiques 1 (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1928).

Figure 1-25. Excerpt from Divertissements typographiques 1, reproduced in Arts et métiers graphiques 13 (September 1929): 812.

Figure 1-26. First advertisement of Studio Deberny et Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 14 (November 1929): 176.

Figure 1-27. Publicity design for Hotchkiss, Studio Deberny et Peignot, 1929.

Figure 1-28. Advertisement of Studio Deberny et Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 18 (July 1930): 215.

Figure 2-1. André Kertész, plate 49 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-2. Herbert Bayer, plate 53 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-3. Max Burchartz, plate 31 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-4. Man Ray, plate 33 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-5. René Zuber, plate 56 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-6. Maurice Tabard, plate 115 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-7. Marc Réal, plate 74 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-8. Maurice Tabard, plate 60 in Photographie 1930.

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Figure 2-9. Emmanuel Sougez, plate 61 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-10. Robert Demachy, Saint-Omer, 1927, reproduced in XXIIe Salon international d’art photographique de Paris 1927 (Paris: Braun), 16.

Figure 2-11. A. M. Cassandre, poster design for Galeries Lafayette, 1928, photograph by André Vigneau.

Figure 2-12. Covers of Photographie, from 1930 to 1940.

Figure 2-13. Carlo Rim and Tytaÿna, Jazz (1928-1929).

Figure 2-14. Germaine Krull, Métal (Paris: Librarie des Arts Décoratifs, 1928).

Figure 2-15. Covers of VU (1928-1939).

Figure 2-16. “Le Triomphe de la femme,” VU 104 (March 1930): 203, photo by André Kertész.

Figure 2-17. László Moholy-Nagy, plate 68-69 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-18. Maurice Tabard, plate 4 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-19. VU, plate 71 (right) in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-20. Alexandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, interior spread of USSR in Construction 12 (1935).

Figure 2-21. Germaine Krull, Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1925.

Figure 2-22. Excerpt from Karl Blossfeld, Urformen der Kunst (1928), Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 689.

Figure 2-23. Excerpt from Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist schön (1929), Arts et métiers graphiques 12 (July 1929): 751.

Figure 2-24. Cover and pages of Das deutsche Lichtbild (1927-1938).

Figure 2-25. Cover and pages of Foto-Auge (1929).

Figure 2-26. Film und Foto, poster, Stuttgart, 1929.

Figure 2-27. Pages from Moholy-Nagy, Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925): 60-61.

Figure 2-28. Photographs by Nadar, pages 10-11 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-29. Pages from Foto-Auge, 73-74.

Figure 2-30. Eli Lotar, Aux Abattoirs de la Villette, 1929.

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Figure 2-31. Eli Lotar, plate 51 in Photographie.

Figure 2-32. Maurice Tabard, Eméric Feher in Studio Deberny et Peignot, 1929.

Figure 2-33. Germaine Krull, inaugural program of Théâtre Pigalle, 1929, Arts et métiers graphiques 13 (September 1929): 806.

Figure 2-34. Catalogue of Rochet-Schneider, 1929, Arts et métiers graphiques 14 (November 1929): 865.

Figure 2-35. Charles Sheeler, plates 90-91 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-36. Eli Lotar (left), Le Charles (right), plates 38-39 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-37. László Moholy-Nagy, Negative print, Foto-Auge, 69.

Figure 2-38. Maurice Tabard (left), Daniel Masclet (right), plates 108-109 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-39. Emmanuel Sougez (left), International News Photo (right), plates 62-63 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-40. Unique page layouts in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-41. László Moholy-Nagy, “Dynamics of the Metropolis,” in Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925), 134-135.

Figure 2-42. Alfred Tolmer, Mise en Page (London: The Studio, 1931).

Figure 2-43. Double-page articles in VU. “Cils,” VU 204 (February 1932): 180-181, photos by André Kertész (top), “Vous êtes-vous regardé dormir?” VU 452 (November 1936): 1372-1373, photos by Maurice Tabard (bottom).

Figure 2-44. Edward Steichen (left), André Kertész (right), plates 84-85 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-45. Anton Stankowski (left), Max Burchartz (right), plates 44-45 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-46. Laure Albin Guillot, plates 46-47 in Photographie 1930.

Figure 2-47. Promotional booklet for Sphinx, 1925.

Figure 2-48. Promotional leaflet for Astrée, 1920s.

Figure 2-49. Seule une lettre n'est rien (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1929).

Figure 2-50. Stephane Mallarmé, Un coup de dès n’abolira jamais le hasard, 1897.

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Figure 2-51. André Rouveyre, “Le Culte de Guillaume Apollinaire,” Arts et métiers graphiques 17 (May 1930): 2-3.

Figure 2-52. Maurice Cloche, Alphabet (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1932).

Figure 2-53. Gelatin silver prints in Alphabet, 1932.

Figure 2-54. Typographic arrangements in Alphabet, 1932.

Figure 2-55. Excerpts from Herbert Hoffmann, ed., Alphabets (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1929).

Figure 2-56. Brassaï, Paris de nuit (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1932), cover and pages.

Figure 2-57. Manfred Curry, A Travers les nuages (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1932), cover and pages.

Figure 2-58. Plate of “Anonyme,” in Alphabet, 1932.

Figure 2-59. First photographic print in Alphabet, 1932.

Figure 2-60. Emmanuel Sougez, Alphabet (Paris: Editions Antoine Roche, 1932).

Figure 2-61. U.S. Camera (New York: Morrow, 1935).

Figure 3-1. Franz Roh, plate 67 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-2. Maurice Tabard, plate 68 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-3. Roger Parry, plate 77 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-4. Cover of Photographie 1935.

Figure 3-5. Albert Boitier, plate 33 in Photographie 1935 (left), Juliette Lasserre, plate 102 in Photographie 1935 (right).

Figure 3-6. Philippe Pottier, plate 5 in Photographie 1935 (left), Emmanuel Sougez, plate 100 in Photographie 1935 (right).

Figure 3-7. Rémy Duval, plate 45 in Photographie 1935.

Figure 3-8. Marcel Brodsky, plate 118 in Photographie 1935 (left), Nora Dumas, plate 119 in Photographie 1935 (right).

Figure 3-9. Albert Renger-Patzsch, Schaffende Hände, 1929, reproduced in XXIIe Salon international d’art photographique de Paris 1927 (Paris: Braun), 40.

Figure 3-10. Jacques-André Boiffard, Big Toe, 1929.

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Figure 3-11. Albert Renger-Patzsch, Hein Gorny and Ruth Lessing, 1927.

Figure 3-12. Hein Gorny, Winter in the Pine Tree Forest, 1930.

Figure 3-13. Albert Renger-Patzsch, plate 45 in Die Welt ist schön (Berlin: Kurt Wolf, 1928).

Figure 3-14. Hein Gorny, plate 12 in Photographie 1932.

Figure 3-15. Hein Gorny, Untitled (Thumbtacks), ca.1931.

Figure 3-16. Hein Gorny, plate 5 in Photographie 1938.

Figure 3-17. Hein Gorny, plate 107 in Photographie 1933-34.

Figure 3-18. Hein Gorny, plate 48 in Photographie 1933-34.

Figure 3-19. Hein Gorny, plate 43 in Photographie 1933-34.

Figure 3-20. Erno Vadas, plate 107 in Photographie 1935.

Figure 3-21. Advertisement of the Leica, in Photographie 1932, 139.

Figure 3-22. André Kertész, Paris vu par André Kertész (Paris: Librarie Plon, 1934).

Figure 3-23. Moï Ver, Paris (Paris: Edition Jeanne Walter, 1931).

Figure 3-24. Roger Schall, Paris de jour (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937).

Figure 3-25. Portraits of Wanda Hubbell, Lucien Lorelle (left) and Man Ray (right), plates 6-7 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-26. Laure Albin Guillot (left), Georges Hoyningen-Heune (right), plates 2-3 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-27. Germaine Krull, plate 5 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-28. André Vigneau, plate 10 in Photographie 1931.

Figure 3-29. Two photographs by Sougez, “Actualité graphique,” Arts et métiers graphiques 18 (July 1930): 1042-43.

Figure 3-30. Publicité, published as Arts et métiers graphiques 42 (May 1934).

Figure 3-31. Page from Publicité 1937, 104.

Figure 3-32. Rémy Duval, “Pierre Boucher,” Arts et métiers graphiques 49 (October 1935): 46-47.

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Figure 3-33. Pierre Boucher, plate 68 in Photographie 1935.

Figure 3-34. Rémy Duval, “Herbert Matter,” Arts et métiers graphiques 51 (February 1936): 44-45.

Figure 3-35. Cover of Photo-ciné-graphie 12 (February 1934), photo by Hein Gorny (the same image as fig. 3-17).

Figure 3-36. Rémy Duval, “Analyse picturale”, Photo-ciné-graphie 20 (October 1934): 10- 11.

Figure 3-37. “Envois de nos abonnés”, Photo-ciné-graphie 23 (January 1935): 16-17.

Figure 3-38. Polissard, photograph printed in “Envois de nos abonnés,” detail of fig. 3-37.

Figure 3-39. Emmanuel Sougez, “La Lumière du jour et les natures mortes,” Photo-ciné- graphie 23 (January 1935): 4.

Figure 3-40. Emmanuel Sougez, plate 50 in Photographie 1933-34 (the same image as fig. 3-39).

Figure 3-41. Alexander Keighley, plate 21 in Photographie 1935.

Figure 3-42. Erno Vadas, in “Analyse picturale,” La Revue de la Photographie 37 (June 1936): 12-13.

Figure 3-43. Erno Vadas in “Analyse picturale,” La Revue de la Photographie 34 (February 1936): 12-13.

Figure 4-1. Poster, invitation, and catalogue of the Exposition internatinale de la photographie contemporaine, 1936, photo by Rémy Duval.

Figure 4-2. Installation shot of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des arts décoratifs, section moderne.

Figure 4-3. Installation shot of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des arts décoratifs, section moderne.

Figure 4-4. Installation shot of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des arts décoratifs, section moderne.

Figure 4-5. Installation shot of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des arts décoratifs, section moderne.

Figure 4-6. Installation shot of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des arts décoratifs, section rétrospective.

Figure 4-7. Display of a Daguerreotype camera, the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, Musée des art s décoratifs.

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Figure 4-8. Fernand Léger and Charlotte Perriand, photomurals, Agriculture Pavilion, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-9. Installation shot of Room 1, curated by László Moholy-Nagy, Film und Foto, Stuttgart, 1929.

Figure 4-10. Installation shot of Room 3 dedicated to John Heartfield, Film und Foro, Stuttgart, 1929.

Figure 4-11. First salon of the Union des Artistes Moderne, 1930, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

Figure 4-12. Call for Submission, Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, 1936.

Figure 4-13. Installation shot of Salon international d’art photographique, 1926.

Figure 4-14. Sasha Stone, Femmes (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1928).

Figure 4-15. Rémy Duval, ed. 28 Etudes de nus (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1936).

Figure 4-16. Louis Chéronnet, “Pour un musée de la Photographie,” in Photographie 1933- 34 (Paris: Editiions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1933).

Figure 4-17. Bill Brandt, Londres de nuit (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1938).

Figure 4-18. Ylla, Petits et grands au royaume des bêtes (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1939).

Figure 4-19. Advertisement of Photographie 1936 in the catalogue of Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, 1936, non paginated.

Figure 4-20. Verso of fig. 4-19, advertisement of La Revue de la Photographie.

Figure 4-21. Josep Renau, photomurals in Spanish Pavillion, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-22. Photo-Ciné-Phono pavillion, photographs by Agence Chevojon and François Kollar, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-23. A. M. Cassandre, Peignot, released by Deberny et Peignot, 1937.

Figure 4-24. L'Homme, l'éléctricité, la vie (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937).

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Figure 4-25. Les Maîtres de l'art indépendant, 1895-1937 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937).

Figure 4-26. Pierre Verger, L'Exposition 37: 60 photographes de Pierre Verger (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937).

Figure 4-27. Panel display of Peignot, U.A.M. pavilion, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-28. Stand of Editions Charles Moreau, Publicité pavilion, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-29. Display of Litérature section, Palais de Chaillot, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-30. Paul Valéry’s quote in Peignot, façade of Palais de Chaillot.

Figure 4-31. Entrance of Imprimerie section, Palais de Chaillot, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-32. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, “Les Encres,” Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-33. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, “La Composition,” Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-34. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, printing machines for typographic, offset, and héliogravure printing processes, Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-35. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, “Le Caractère,” Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-36. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, “La Maquette,” Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-37. Installation shot of Imprimerie section, “L’Art graphique,” Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, Paris, 1937.

Figure 4-38. André Lejard, “A Propos d'une conception nouvelle de la publicité murale: Lucien Mazenod,” Arts et métiers graphiques 61 (January 1938): 41-42.

Figure C-1. The Family of Man, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955.

Figure C-2. Catalogue of Exposition des artistes du livre et de l'imprimerie, 1944, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

Figure C-3. Cover of Photographie 1947.

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Figure C-4. Keystone, plates 77-80 in Photographie 1947.

Figure C-5. Cas Corthuys, plates 85-86 in Photographie 1947.

Figure C-6. Humanist images in Photographie 1949 (left: Hans Namuth, Right, Grete Popper).

Figure C-7. Modernist works in Photographie 1949 (Left: Henry Flannery, Right: Karl- Theodor Gremmler.

Figure C-8. Call for Submission, Photographie 1949.

Figure C-9. Photograph by René-Jacques, Photographie 1949.

1

Introduction

This dissertation examines the evolution of photography in France between the two

World Wars by analyzing the seminal graphic art magazine Arts et métiers graphiques (1927-

1939) (fig. I-1). This bi-monthly periodical was founded by Charles Peignot (1897-1983) (fig.

I-2), the artistic director of the largest manufacturer of typefaces (or “typefoundry”) in interwar France, Deberny et Peignot. Arts et métiers graphiques has been recognized in previous literature as one of the principal vehicles for the modernization of photography in

France. This is primarily because it functioned as an essential conduit for the radical practices developed outside the country. Most prominently, in the spring of 1930, Arts et métiers graphiques published a special issue entitled Photographie, the first encompassing collection of modernist photography in France (fig. I-3). Printing 117 photographs by progressive contemporary practitioners, including Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Germaine Krull, and

André Kertész, this publication showcased the medium’s latest visual repertoire.1 These artists’ and photographers’ uses of extreme close-ups and angled views, as well as various experimental techniques, such as cameraless photogram, multiple exposure, and negative printing, represented expressions specific to the camera. Since the country’s photographic

Note : This dissertation contains a considerable number of quotes from texts originally written in French. All translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

1 See Appendix for the list of photographers featured in Photographie. This volume also contained twelve historical photographs that includes Nadar and Eugène Atget. Including these works, Photographie reproduced 129 images in total.

2

world had been stagnant due to the persistence of Pictorialism, Photographie immediately caused a sensation and provided momentum for the medium’s reformation in France.2

This study clarifies the entire scope of works and projects on photography led by Arts et métiers graphiques and its director Peignot from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s by shedding light on what Photographie’s reputation has obscured. The interwar period is regarded as the watershed in the history of photography. Avant-garde artists and photographers not only established photography’s own expressions but also liberated the medium from its aspiration for high art advocated by Pictorialism by expanding its uses in and as new media. Arts et métiers graphiques has been recognized as the catalyst for this transformation of photography. However, I argue, contrary to such reputation, Arts et métiers graphiques represented a juste-milieu, and even arrière-garde attitude toward photography in interwar France. Instead of revolutionizing photography, the magazine encouraged the medium’s legitimization as a form of high art, combining Pictorialist tenets and modernist understanding of photography.

I examine the emergence and evolution of this attitude by considering photography’s changing relationship with the contemporary development of graphic arts and media.

Photography was first introduced to Arts et métiers graphiques around 1930 as an essential element for the modernization of graphic practices such as publicity and book designs.

However, because of the magazine’s focus on the aesthetic and formalist aspects of graphic arts, photography soon came to be appreciated for its visual beauty and quality of execution, rather than for its function in graphic design. Accordingly, Arts et métiers graphiques started

2 A number of contemporary photographers comments on this publication in their memoirs and interviews. For instance, see, Lucien Lorelle, “Entretien avec Daniel Masclet,” La Photographe 750 (August 24, 1951): 287, Gisèle Freund, “La Photographie moderne,” p.2, typewritten manuscript, Fond Freund, FND163, IMEC (Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine), Caen.

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to promote photography as an autonomous artistic practice independent of graphic contexts over the course of the 1930s. Chronologically tracing such changes in photography’s status in the magazine, this dissertation clarifies how Arts et métiers graphiques’ contributed to—and later withdrew from—the promotion photography as a form of art.

Little significant work on Arts et métiers graphiques has been published in photo history since Françoise Denoyelle clarified Photographie’s significant role in her article in

1987.3 She also shed light on Studio Deberny et Peignot, a photography studio for publicity shots established by Peignot in 1929, which produced advanced graphic designs under the influence of German avant-garde. Since then, overviews and exhibition catalogues on photography in interwar France almost mandatorily mention Arts et métiers graphiques.

However, comments on the periodical are mostly confined to uncritical introductory notes of the impact of Photographie and the studio, reiterating what Denoyelle has discussed.4

Besides photo historians, graphic art historians and literary scholars have also examined Arts et métiers graphiques because the magazine played a significant role in the modernization of French typography, printing, and advertisement.5 Most recently in 2017, the

Belgian literary scholar Kristof van Gansen completed the first book-length monograph of

3 Françoise Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques: Histoire d’images d’une revue de caractère,” La Recherche photographique 3 (December 1987): 7-17.

4 Major overviewing studies include, Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, eds., Voici Paris: Modernités photographiques, 1920–1950 (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2012), Christian Bouqueret, Des Années folles aux années noires: La Nouvelle vision photographique (Paris: Marval, 1997), Françoise Denoyelle, La Lumière de Paris (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), Alain Fleig, Etant donné l’âge de la lumière II: Naissance de la photographie comme média (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 1997). As the most recent work, see, Anne Reverseau, “Arts et métiers graphiques en de fotografie,” in Arts et métiers graphique: Kunst en grafische vormgeving in het interbellum, ed. Kristof van Gansen (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 31-38.

5 See, for instance, Gérard Blanchard, “AMG et la typographie française en 1930,” Arts et métiers du livre 188 (November-December 1994): 32-36, Hélène Dufour, “Arts et métiers graphiques 1927-1939,” Arts et métiers du livre 188 (November-December 1994): 3-32, and Amelia Hugill-Fontanel’s web database, “Arts et Métiers Graphiques Web,” http://amgweb.rit.edu/

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Arts et métiers graphiques as his dissertation.6 Van Gansen clarifies the periodical’s in- between stance to balance radical avant-gardism and conservatism in interwar France, defining this position as a “tempered modernism.” However, as his study focuses particularly on literary and graphic aspects of the magazine, Arts et métiers graphiques’ engagement in photography still lacks substantial analysis, as Denoyelle suggests in 2012, more than two decades after her pioneering work was published.7

Despite such oversight in previous studies, Arts et métiers graphiques made continuous and considerable efforts to promote photography after 1930. Photographie continued as an annual publication until the company ceased its operation in 1939 due to the mobilization of Paris for World War II. The magazine provided a platform for the development of critical discourse on photography in publishing a considerable number of articles by contemporary photographers and critics. Meanwhile, its publishing house, Editions

Arts et Métiers Graphiques, released eleven volumes entirely composed of photographic images including Brassaï’s Paris de nuit (1932).8 Peignot contributed to the education of amateur photographers in directing a new magazine, Photo-ciné-graphie: Revue photographique et ciménatographique pour l'amateur (1933-1936), which later changed its name into La Revue de la photographie in 1934. He also organized a series of photography exhibitions throughout the 1930s that culminated in the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1936. Given such an

6 Kristof van Gansen, “Arts et métiers graphiques : Literature, Typography and Advertising in a Tempered Modernism” (PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuve, 2017).

7 Françoise Denoyelle, “Amitié et réseaux des photographes parisiens dans les années 1930” in Bajac, Voici Paris, 52–53.

8 See Bibliography for the list of the company’s publications.

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inclusive range of enterprises, Arts et métiers graphique was one of the most active and influential agents of the 1930s French photographic scene. However, these projects— especially those of the mid- to late 1930s— have been almost unnoticed in previous scholarship.

The delay in Arts et métiers graphiques’ critical study is first due to the lack of the magazine’s and typefoudry’s archives. Peignot’s nephew Jean-Luc Froissart attests the

Deberny et Peignot archives were lost when the typefoundry closed in 1976.9 Only the archives of the Peignot family have survived as primary documentation. Based on these family records, Froissart composed L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb: L'épopée des Peignot,

1815-1983 (2004), a history of three generations of Peignots: Clémentine Dupont de Vieux

Pont (Charles’s great-grandmother, 1815-1875), Georges Peignot (Charles’s father, 1871-

1916), and Charles Peignot. This volume provides a basic reference for understanding the trajectory of the typefoundry from the late nineteenth century to its closure in 1976 as well as

Charles Peignot’s personality. However, these archival documents, now deposited at the

Bibliothèque Forney in Paris, are limited mostly to Peignot’s works in typography and do not clarify the details of his engagement in photography.

In addition to this lack of primary documentation, the photo historical narrative privileging avant-gardes’ reconsideration of the medium has had limited scholarly interests in

Arts et métiers graphiques. The first studies on interwar French photography were triggered by an interest in Surrealism, a movement which actually had only a limited presence in Arts et métiers graphiques. The seminal essays and exhibitions by American art historians since the late 1970s, most importantly by Rosalind Krauss, raised awareness of the subversive uses of

9 Jean-Luc Froissart, L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb: L'épopée des Peignot, 1815–1983 (Paris: Tekhnê, 2004), 321.

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photography by such artists as Man Ray and Jacques-André Boiffard. Since Krauss’ semiotic approach to photography as “index” was weak in contextual analysis, French photo historians reacted to this by further exploring social historical backdrops of this Parisian avant-garde.10

French scholars also started to examine the connection between France and the international dimension of Constructivism and the New Vision. In 1997, three fundamental studies, by Denoyelle, Christian Bouqueret, and Alain Fleig, were released, all of which discussed how the advent of avant-gardes, especially from Germany, catalyzed the reformation of the French photographic scene.11 These studies also explored the changing environment surrounding the medium by analyzing photography’s development and dissemination through emerging mass circulating print media, such as illustrated magazines, publicity works, and photobooks. Denoyelle’s La Lumière de Paris carefully examined social and economic changes surrounding photography by extensively analyzing the operation of studios, design firms, manufacturers of camera products, and publishers. Bouqueret’s Des

Années folles aux années noires complemented the lack of visual and art historical considerations in Denoyelle’s sociological study by offering rich documentation and accounts of individual photographers. Fleig’s Naissance de la photographie comme média provided an insightful observation on the function of photography on printed media and its social impact.

Literature of the 2000s furthered discussions and research about progressive Parisian photographers as well as photography’s uses in and as new media. Bouqueret’s monographs

10 Rosalind Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 (Winter 1981): 3–34, Krauss, ed., L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985). Krauss also examined the active employment of photography in the group’s magazines such as La Révolution Surréaliste, Documents, and Minotaure, which encouraged subsequent studies of photography in contemporary printed media. See also Dawn Ades, ed., Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006). For the most recent and encompassing study of Surrealist photography in France, see, Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, eds., La Subversion des images : Surréalisme, photographie, film (Paris : Centre Pompidou, 2009).

11 See note 4.

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and a series of monographic exhibitions at the Musée du Jeu de Paume deepened the understanding of individual photographers’ biography, professional and artistic traits.12 In their study on the pioneering French illustrated magazine VU (1928-1939) directed by Lucien

Vogel, Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy analyzed the rise of modern photography in relation to the contemporary innovations of the graphic, publishing, and printing industries in

France in the late 1920s.13

Photo historians also started to examine France’s position in the transnational expansion of modern photography’s theories and praxis. Voici Paris: Modernités photographiques,1920-1950, the exhibition curated by Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2012, defined France as the cultural hub of the European- wide photographic revolution in the interwar period.14 This interest also manifested itself across the Atlantic in Object: Photo, Modern Photographs, The Thomas Walther Collection

1909-1949 held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2014. With Bajac—then the chief curator of the museum’s photography department—as one of its principal contributors,

12 Bouqueret curated a series of exhibitions in museums and galleries in France on understudied photographers, such as Pierre Boucher, Roger Parry, and René Zuber, based on his vast collection of interwar photography. The outcome of these exhibitions were published as Collection des Années 30 (Paris : Marval). It includes, Les Femmes photographes: De la nouvelle vision en France 1920-1940 (1998), André Steiner: L’homme curieux (1999), Jean Moral: L’œil capteur (1999), Daniel Masclet: Photographe critique théoricien (2001), Pierre Boucher: Photomonteur (2003), and René Zuber: La nouvelle objectivité (2003). The list of major Jeu de Paume exhibition catalogues is as follows. Mouna Mekouarn and Christophe Berthoud, eds., Roger Parry: Photographies, desssins, mises en pages (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), Michel Frizot, ed., André Kertész (Paris: Hazan, 2010), Delphine Desveaux, ed., Laure Albin Guillot: L’Enjeu classique (Paris: Le Martinière, 2013), Marta Gili, ed., Florence Henri: Miroir des avant-gards, 1927-1940 (Paris: Jeu de Paume, 2015), Michel Frizot, ed., Germaine Krull (Paris: Hazan, 2015), Damarice Amao, Clément Chéroux, and Pia Viewing, eds., Eli Lotar (Paris: Editions Centre Pompidou, 2017).

13 Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy, VU: The Story of A Magazine (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), Michel Frizot, “Photo/Graphics in Modern French Magazines: The Possibilities of Rotogravure, 1926-1935,” Photo/Graphics (Paris: Jeu de Paume, [2007]), 5-12, http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/Photographisme_GB.pdf. See also, Christian Bouqueret, Paris: Les Livres de photographie, des années 1920 aux années 1950 (Paris: Gründ, 2012).

14 Bajac and Chéroux, Voici Paris, 2012.

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this exhibition visualized the interaction of modern photographers and movements across national borders by mapping the migration of people and exchange of objects.15

In view of such a focus on “new photography” 16 and its global dissemination via or as media, both American and French scholars have been satisfied with assigning Arts et métiers graphiques the role of French pioneer. This stemmed in part from a larger scholarly bias characteristically seen in each country. American scholarship has privileged high-modernism since the 1940s. The 2014 MoMA exhibition Object: Photo, for instance, still focuses almost exclusively on progressive Parisian figures and events. Meanwhile, French scholars have remained consciously or unconsciously bound by nationalistic motives to define France’s crucial importance in the modernization of photography.

As a consequence, these studies have failed to critically examine the way in which

Arts et métiers graphiques and Photographie did not fit into such progressivist narratives.

Arts et métiers graphiques became increasingly conservative over the course of the 1930s. By the mid-1930s, Photographie had nearly abandoned novel expressions of modernist photography in favor of traditional pictorial subjects, such as landscapes, nudes, and still life, and readopted conventional rules of picture-making established within French academic training of art. It thus returned to Pictorialism on the level of iconography and picture-making.

15 Mitra Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner, and Maria Morris Hambourg, eds., Object: Photo, Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2014). This exhibition came with a website that visualized such interactions, which is as important contribution as the show and its catalogue. https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/#home. As another important American exhibitions of interwar photography, see also, Maria Morris Hambourg and Christopher Phillips, eds., The New Vision: Photography between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art / H. N. Abrams, 1994). Phillips also edited an anthology of essential texts on modern photography when this exhibition took place. Christopher Phillips, ed., Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940 (New York: Aperture, 1994).

16 This expression has been widely used for designating modernist photography in the interwar period. See for instance, Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era, 1994, xi.

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Previous literature has simply ascribed this about-face to xenophobic cultural climates after the Depression.17 Due to the economic, social, and political instability in the mid-1930s,

French photographers started to criticize étrangers from Central and Eastern European countries who brought about modernism and aspired to define “Frenchness” of their own practices in distinction with the formers’.18 Bajac argues the revival of and reliance on traditionalist visual repertoire were strategies to establish photography à la française by revitalizing classicism based on the French academic traditions.19

As Jean Clair’s influential exhibition in 1980 Les Réalismes clarified, European painting and sculpture underwent—in part—a return to subjects and traditional visual idioms between 1919 and 1939.20 A number of photo historians have thus attempted to locate photography within this interwar phenomenon. Both French and American photo historians have used the term retour à l’ordre (return to order) to designate the rise of photography’s conservatism in the mid-1930s.21 This expression is generally used for the return to classicism in painting and sculpture in the 1920s. Photo historians have thus appropriated this expression, despite the ten-year time difference between the two cultural phenomena.22

17 Quentin Bajac, “Paris à la découverte de la photographie moderne, 1929-1939” in Voici Paris, 2012, 28, and Dominique Baqué, ed., Les Documents de la modernité: Anthologie de textes sur la photographie de 1919 à 1939 (Paris: Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 1993), 438-440.

18 Emmanuel Sougez, “Le Rectangle,” Photo-Illustration 33 (June 1938): 4–5.

19 Bajac, Voici Paris, 2012, 28.

20 Jean Claire ed., Les Réalismes 1919-1939 (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1980).

21 Voici Paris, 2012, 270, and Maria Morris Hambourg, “Exposition Internationale de la Photographie Contemporaine at Musée des Arts Décoratifs,” on the website of Object:Photo, 2014. https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/exhibitions/30.html

22 For art’s “return to order” in the 1920s, see, Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps : The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925 (London : Thames and Hudson, 1989).

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Though I admit the relevance of this socio-political interpretation, I claim this intermedial parallel between photography and art’s other fields has obscured conditions and contexts specific to modern photography’s evolution. In painting, the appropriation of neo- classical, or realist modes has specific ideological connotations but is a return to the medium’s own traditions. However, in photography, the reemergence of traditional painterly visual repertoire is an anachronism that can overturn the primary condition of modern photography’s ontology. The interwar revolution in modernist photography was founded on the medium’s autonomy and the rejection of Pictorialism’s imitations of painting and printmaking. From this point of view, the reappropriation of subjects and visual expressions based on painterly practices should be considered as a seriously non-synchronic phenomenon that betrays the most important tenets of photography’s new self-definition. It is thus necessary to closely examine the specific conditions in interwar France that allowed this anachronistic return to conventional artistic idioms to reemerge.

I argue that this phenomenon occurred because photographers and critics in interwar

France persisted in legitimizing the medium of photography as an art form with a capital A.

Almost from the beginning of its history, photography was inevitably compared to painting and printmaking as a means of producing two-dimensional imagery. Consequently, photographers and critics kept asking the question “is photography art?,” leading to the rise of

Pictorialism in the nineteenth century.

Generally speaking, the interwar period marked a significant shifting in focus from photography’s identification with existing art forms to its use as a catalyst for the reconsideration of the notion of art. When Walter Benjamin discussed the shift from artworks’

“cult value” to their “exhibition value” in his seminal “The Work of Art in the Age of

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Technological Reproducibility” (1936), he clarified photography’s capacity to revolutionize the existing structures of art.23 His model, Russian Constructivists, such as El Lissitzky and

Alexandr Rodchenko, regarded photography as an ideological device with populist potential for overturning the established art institutions prioritizing easel painting.24 The New Vision artists in the Bauhaus, led by Moholy-Nagy, designated the camera as a prosthesis for the expansion of human vision to transcend the conventional ways of perception founded on the system of linear perspective.25 In short, the progressive interwar artists, photographers, and critics started to focus on what photography does to art, instead of asking whether photography is art.

This paradigm-shift was triggered by the expansion and widespread application of photography in mass media. The technological and industrial innovations in the 1920s enabled the multiplication of photographic images in various kinds of paper media.

Accordingly, photographers were required to redefine their job to adjust to the new role they were supposed to play in the society. As the photo historian Juliette Lavie discusses, in France, this reconsideration manifested as a shift of photographers’ self-recognition from isolated artists to artisanal professionals who supplied carefully made photographic images to mass printed media. Emmanuel Sougez, the most influential and respected photographer in interwar

France insisted photographers should pursue the perfection of their métiers (know-how,

23 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, eds. Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty and Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2008).

24 For Russian Constructivism, see Susan Turmarkin Goodman and Jens Hoffmann, eds., The Power of Pictures : Early Soviet Photography ,Early Soviet Film (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2015).

25 For the New Vision, especially Moholy-Nagy’s works, see, Matthew S. Witkovsky, Moholy-Nagy: Future Present (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago Press, 2016).

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professional skill and knowledge gained through long and intense training), distinguishing themselves from art photographers who created their works for the art’s sake only.26

Nevertheless, when we closely examine critical discourses on photography in Arts et métiers graphiques, we notice the aspiration for photography’s legitimization was not really abandoned. For instance, in the introductory essay for Photographie in 1930, “Photographie:

Vision du monde,” the prominent art critic Waldemar George clearly defined the act of photographing as an artistic practice: “A man photographs like he paints, like he sculpts, with the eyes of the soul. . . . This is to say that the lens plays the role of a paintbrush, palette, and paint box for photographers.”27 Comparing photography to painting and considering it a personal expression of one’s “soul,” Waldemar George’s understanding of the relationship between photography and art remained conventional. His description of photography as an essentially humanist practice also echoes his writings on painting in this period. For

Waldemar George, photography was “an autonomous form of artistic creation” in the same manner as painting.28 The fact this essay accompanied Photographie in 1930 indicates the

26 Juliette Lavie, “Emmanuel Sougez (1889–1972): Un photographe en prise avec son temps” (PhD diss., Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense, 2013), and, Lavie, “Une autre image sociale du photographe: Du photographe artiste au photographe artisan 1930-1960,” Territoires contemporains 4 http://tristan.u- bourgogne.fr/CGC/publications/image_artiste/Juliette_Lavie.html

27 Waldemar George, “Photographie: Vision du monde,” Arts et métiers graphiques 16 (March 1930) : 12. “Un homme photographie comme il peint, comme il sculpte, avec les yeux de l’âme. . . . C’est dire que l’objectif tient lieu au photographe de pinceau, de palette et de boîte à couleur.” Tracing the historical unfolding of photography and its contemporary transformation, this text by Waldemar George offered the first comprehensive and theoretically consistent critique in France on the development of photography. Dominique Baqué counted this essay among the “textes fondateurs” in her anthology of texts on photography written in interwar France. Baqué, Les Documents de la modernité, 1993, 33–38.

28 Waldemar George, “Photographie: Vision du monde,” 1930, 134. Photography is “une forme autonome de création artistique.” For his critiques of painting, see Romy Golan, Modernity & Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France Between the Wars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), and Matthew Affron, “Waldemar George: A Parisian Art Critic on Modernism and Fascism,” in Fascist Visions: Art and Ideology in France and Italy, eds. Matthew Affron and Mark Antliff (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 171-204.

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publication’s reputation as the herald of radical photographic practices also needs reconsideration.

This ambition toward art does not negate Sougez’s claim of photography’s professionalization. Indeed, the two attitudes were often merged in contemporary critiques on photography. The emphasis on métiers was in fact integrated into and even a buttress of the argument in favor of photography as art. A number of critics regarded the technical perfection not only as the embodiment of artisanal professionalism, but also as a means of subjective, thus artistic, expression. The conservative critic Robert Auvillain states in his essay for

Photographie in 1935:

It is necessary to remember that photography is really an art and regardless of the methods used, it will always allow an artistic temperament to express itself ever more easily as the tools are improved and the methods of using them become more simplified. Photographers will always have the liberty to choose their subject, to position it, to light it, and to release the mechanism of the shutter when it pleases them. The more the process becomes perfect, the more the image will be true and will faithfully express what the eye of the photographer has seen.29

Advocating the mastery of photography’s mechanical and technical elements, Auvillain clearly distinguishes his attitude from Pictorialism. However, insisting on the perfection of métier in service of subjective expression, his argument combines the tenets of Pictorialism with those of a modern professional attitude. What he demonstrates here is a shift from art

29 Robert Auvillain, “Les Nouveautés techniques de l'année photographique,” in Photographie 1936 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1935), 131. “Il faut se souvenir que la photographie est vraiment un art et quelles que soient les méthodes employées, elle permettra toujours à un tempérament artistique de se manifester d’autant plus facilement, que les outils seront plus perfectionnés et les méthodes d’emploi de ceux-ci plus simplifiées. Le photographe aura toujours la liberté de choisir son sujet, de le placer, de l’éclairer, et de déclencher le mécanisme de l'obturateur, quand il lui plaira. Plus le procédé sera parfait, plus l’image sera vraie et traduira fidèlement ce que l’œil du photographe aura su voir.”

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photography to the art of photography, which should be distinguished from both the avant- garde’s radicalism and the claim for photography’s professionalization.

As I will show in chapter 1 and 2, the aspiration for the photography’s legitimization as art was also prompted by the medium’s reliance on the promotion of graphic art in Arts et métiers graphiques and Peignot’s business. This argument may sound contradictory. For, indeed, the development of graphic arts has been recognized as the key to liberate photography from its conventional relationship to art as is embodied by Sougez’s insistence on the medium’s professionalization. As the art director of the Deberny et Peignot typefoundry, Peignot’s ultimate mission was the reformation and modernization of typography and printing in France. Peignot was thus in direct contact with the German avant- garde, most prominently the New Typography movement led by Jan Tschichold that aimed at democratizing art via graphic media. Photography came into Peignot’s consideration as a result of this contact because the avant-gardes in Germany treated the medium as an essential element for the innovation of graphic practices.30

However, as van Gansen clearly points out, Arts et métiers graphiques did not fully absorb the New Typography’s revolutionary tenets for deconstructing the existing hierarchy of art.31 Instead, the periodical aspired to raise graphic arts to the rank of “major” art as creative as painting, literature, and music. As the introduction of photography to Peignot’s

30 See also Olivier Lugon, “La Photographie des typographes,” Etudes photographiques 20 (June 2007). Lugon ucoins the phrase photography “in ink” to describe this use of the medium in printed matters. For photography “in ink,” see also Frizot and Veigy, VU, 2009, Bouqueret, Paris: Les Livres de photographie, 2012. For general issues regarding photography “in ink” not limited to France, see, Jorge Ribalta, Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to the Family of Man (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemorani de Barcelona, 2008), and Matthew Witkovsky, ed., Avant-Garde Art in Everyday Life: Early Twentieth-Century European Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

31 Kristof van Gansen, “‘Une page est une image’: Text as Image in Arts et métiers graphiques,” Journal of European Periodical Studies 2 (no. 2, Winter 2017): 142.

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business first occurred as a genre of “graphy,” its legitimization as art came from this ambition to elevate graphic practices that had been considered an inferior kind of applied art.

Nevertheless, though it may sound contradictory again, the medium’s reliance on graphic contexts also prevented Peignot from continuing to support photography as an autonomous art from. Despite his continuous promotion of photography in the interwar period,

Peignot almost completely withdrew from it after World War II. In his résumés, curriculum vitae, and interviews after the war, Peignot also remains strangely reticent about his photography projects in the 1930s as if they did not exist.32 I argue this disappearance of photography in his activity is an ironic result of the medium’s dependence on the graphics in

Arts et métiers graphiques. Unlike typography, photography can be independent of printed matters because it can be produced and received as a self-contained medium. Accordingly, as

I argue in Chapter 3, its promotion as a legitimate art form furthered its independence from graphic contexts. And once photography became less dependent on his primary business,

Peignot gradually lost his motive for supporting it.

This discussion also concerns photography’s generally slow and hesitant integration into the art institutional framework in France. Arts et métiers graphiques’ embrace of photographic art was given form when Peignot organized the Exposition Internationale de la photographie contemporaine at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, located in North West end of the Palais du Louvre in 1936. This huge exhibition displaying nearly 1,700 photographs was the first occasion on which photography was featured in a state-sponsored “art” museum in

France. As I show in Chapter 4, this exhibition also provided a model for the canonical

32 Don Froissart, Box 5, Folder “Biographies,” Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris. Published interviews are as follows: “Deberny et Peignot: La Belle époque de la typographie,” Caractère 12 (December 1975), 32–53, Gérard Blanchard, “Georges Peignot: Créateur français de typographie moderne,” Caractère Noël 13 (1961), n.p., and “Les Peignots: Georges, Charles,” Communication et langages 59 (1984), 61–85.

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Photography 1839-1937 curated by Beaumont Newhall at MoMA in 1937. For this pioneering project for the institutionalization of photography, Newhall contacted Peignot for advice, and the latter significantly contributed to the American show by introducing photographers and collectors connected to his vast network. However, although the 1936

Paris exhibition was one of the world’s first attempts to introduce photography in a museum, the medium’s true incorporation into France’s public art institutions did not occur until the

1960s.

In the recent book published in 2017, the photo historian Eléonore Challine traces this hesitant and delayed integration of photography in France by closely examining projects for a photography museum led by the French government, public organizations, and collectors.33

To her focus on institutional projects, I add photography’s rootedness in graphic professions as another key factor for this delay. Not limited to Peignot, most of the main advocates and promoters of photography in interwar France, including Vogel, Carlo Rim, and Florence Fels, belonged primarily to the country’s printing and publishing industries, as editors, publishers, or graphic designers.34 Like Peignot, these promoters embraced photography for their own publishing business. They also withdrew from photography’s promotion in the post-World

War II period, which suspended photography between art and graphic contexts and led to the delay of its true institutionalization in France. The analysis of Arts et métiers graphiques thus provides a perfect case study to understand the position of photography in France from the interwar period and onwards.

33 Eléonore Challine, Une Histoire contrariée: Le musée de photographie en France (1839-1945) (Paris: Editions Macula, 2017).

34 Denoyelle, La Lumière de Paris, Tome II, Les usages de la photographie, 1919-1939, 312.

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The break with past art’s conventions and reliance on graphic media have been defined as two essential backdrops of photography’s revolution in the interwar period.

However, as this dissertation demonstrates, Arts et métiers graphiques proves that this schematic understanding did not really fit into France. The magazine certainly provided momentum for the reconsideration of photography by introducing and publicizing the medium’s modern transformation. Yet, it did not fully absorb it and, instead, continued and invigorated past art photography’s tenets. And interestingly, this promotion of photography as art occurred as a result of the increasing attention to the medium brought about by the advent of avant-garde. This magazine thus reveals another aspect of photography’s modern evolution overshadowed by, but coinciding with, the towering presence of the avant-gardes’ radicalism.

Photography was invented by two Frenchmen, Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre.

France also has its reputation as the center of avant-garde art since the late nineteenth century.

Bound by such reputation of France, photo historians have avoided facing the non-synchronic understanding of photography in interwar France by mostly discussing external factors, such as the Depression, xenophobia, and nationalism. This dissertation critiques such methodological issues and positively evaluates the anachronism in photography represented by Arts et métiers graphiques as the true idiosyncrasy of the 1930s French photographic scene.

In doing so, this study reconsiders both history and historiography of interwar French photography.

This dissertation leaves out two major and frequently discussed subjects in previous scholarship: Surrealism’s subversive uses of photography and socially engaged photographic practices. The omission of these topics is simply because Arts et métiers graphiques did not deal with such kinds of photography arguably because of aesthetic reasons. However, this

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omission is not meant to undermine these tendencies or to say Arts et métiers graphiques constituted a separate photographic world disconnected from them. Peignot was a prominent businessman and social figure who evidently connected to both currents. Man Ray, Brassaï, and Maurice Tabard frequently contributed to publications directed by Peignot, while Philippe

Soupault and Pierre Mac Orlan provided articles in Arts et métiers graphiques. Peignot also mingled with contemporary publishers of illustrated magazines that mediated the rise of photo reportage. Among others, Vogel, the director of the seminal illustrated magazine VU who famously sent Robert Capa to Spain when the Civil War broke out, was Peignot’s close friend and mentor. 35

Despite such connections to radical and engaged photographers, critics, and editors,

Arts et métiers graphiques was and remained in the juste-milieu, both artistically and politically, balancing extreme attitudes. For Arts et métiers graphiques and Peignot, art should be aesthetically pleasing, not subversive or convulsive as embodied by photographs seen in typical Surrealist practices. Whereas Peignot’s mentor Vogel’s politcal allegiences were to the

Left and strongly anti-fascist, Peignot’s stance remained inclined to the Right and best described as opportunist. He undertook an important exhibit of printing in the Paris Worlds’

Fair in 1937 held under the French Popular Front, and yet later became the president of a governmental organization, Comité d’organisation des Industries, Arts et Commerces du

Livres (COAIACL), under the Vichy regime. His contribution to both Left and Right-wing governments underscores his in-between political stance.

35 The following three volumes provide encompassing accounts on VU and Vogel: Frizot and de Veigy, VU, 2009, Danielle Leenaerts, Petite histoire du magazine Vu (1928-1940): Entre photographie d’information et photographie d’art (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2010), and Sophie Kurkdjian, Lucien Vogel et Michel de Brunhoff, parcours croisées de deux éditeurs de presse illustrée au XXe siècle (Bayonne: Institut Universitaire Varenne, 2014).

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Through examining this position of Arts et métiers graphiques, I demonstrate the diversity of the interwar French photographic scene in which different attitudes toward photography coexisted. As the photo historian Dominique Baqué correctly observes, the

French photography world in this period remained truly individualistic and multi-faceted, lacking the institutional mobilization for revolutionizing photography seen in the Soviet

Union and Germany.36 Thus, there are as many “photographies” as there are photographic contexts. Arts et métiers graphiques’ works represent this plurality of photography in interwar

France and teaches us to see the development of modern photography as a fluctuation of the medium’s position and status, a restless and dynamic quest for the identity of photography, rather than a straightforward progress of a fixed single entity.

Chapter Overview

This dissertation consists of four chapters that chronologically trace the changing relationship of photography and graphic arts in Arts et métiers graphiques. This paper can be divided into two sections. The first two chapters mainly concern the position of photography in the innovation and modernization of graphic art in the late 1920s to the early 1930s.

Chapter 1 and 2 also analyze the reception and transformation of the avant-garde in France.

The latter two chapters examine how photography became an autonomous and legitimate art form by considering the rise of conservatism in the mid- to late 1930s.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Arts et métiers graphiques and examines its limited absorption of avant-garde influence. It also defines photography’s position in Arts et métiers graphiques’ projects for the modernization of French typography and printing in the mid- to

36 Baqué, Les Documents de la modernité, 1993, 17.

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late 1920s. Peignot, as the heir to France’s largest typefoundry, Deberny et Peignot, led the innovation of typography in France by actively introducing the ideas and practices of the

German New Typography. However, instead of fully absorbing its tenets for the standardization of typography, Peignot put more emphasis on the medium’s formal and aesthetic qualities, backed up by his aspiration to raise graphic arts to the rank of fine art.

Since photography was introduced as a by-product of this process, its treatment in his business followed the same principle. I argue that this formalist attitude encouraged the following development of photography in the projects of Arts et métiers graphiques in the coming decade.

Chapter 2 focuses on Photographie in 1930, the most famous publication of Arts et métiers graphique. This chapter considers how this seminal publication embodied the magazine’s emphasis on aesthetic qualities of graphic practices and photography. Carefully conceived in their printing and page layout, photographs in this volume were intended to invite contemplative and slow appreciation. This attitude is discussed against the backdrop of the increasing use of photography in contemporary printed media. Due to the technological innovations of printing and the growing demand for immediate perception of information in a fast-paced society, texts were gradually replaced by images. Illustrated magazines and publicity works represented this modern visual experience based on the quickness and immediacy of seeing. Contrary to this widespread use of photography in and as new media,

Photographie demanded a mode of aesthetic appreciation of printed images in a similar way one looks at prints, and even paintings.

I also contextualize Photographie within Peignot’s innovations of typography in the same period. Photographs in this volume are arranged to invite interpretation of images

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according to their juxtaposition and sequence. These photographs were printed to be “read” as if they were textual entities. This textualization of images in Photographie was a simultaneous and reciprocal process with the visualization of text in the works by Deberny et

Peignot. Peignot made specimen leaflets upon the release of each new typeface in the 1920s, in which letters are treated as visual entities rather than phonetic signs. By clarifying the interactions and mutual influence of these leaflets and Photographie, this chapter defines the reciprocal relationship of photography and typography in Peignot’s business. Photographie thus embodied Arts et métiers graphiques’ ambition for promoting graphic arts including both photography and typography as creative artistic practices.

Chapter 3 analyzes how photography came to be redefined as an autonomous field of art in the mid-1930s. Unlike typical socio-contextual readings, this chapter argues that the emergence of the conservative trend occurred within a complex web surrounding photography, including the saturation of modernist images in mass media, the rise of amateur photographers, and the persistence of art photography. The proliferation of photography in illustrated magazines and publicity shots brought about a decline in quality due to the overuse of modernist techniques and visual repertoire. Such practices were gradually criticized, which led to the reevaluation of traditional subjects and careful picture-making. This change engendered an intentional distinction between two kinds of photography: the creation of independent artistic photographs and the application of photographic images in graphic media.

Around 1934, Arts et métiers graphiques clearly divided these two practices in its columns and publications.

The newly defined art of photography was founded on the camera’s objective and penetrating gaze, which thus marked a break with Pictorialist art photography and its

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imitation of painting. However, this art of photography still sustained the conventional understanding of art in defining photography as a means of personal expression, which made it, paradoxically, close to Pictorialism in tenet. As a result, despite its claim to be an autonomous field of art, photography in the mid-1930s became a pastiche of the expression specific to photography and traditional painterly subjects and techniques. This situation clearly represents the ambivalent relationship between photography and art in interwar France.

The establishment of photography as art coincided with the growing demand for its institutionalization. As the 1930s corresponded to the centenary of photography’s invention, its acceptance into France’s utmost cultural institution—the art museum—became a pressing issue. However, this process was yet another ambivalent project. Chapter 4 discusses the suspension of photography between graphic and art contexts by examining two exhibitions in which Peignot was involved, the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine in 1936 and the Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne in

1937. In doing so, this chapter considers the position of photography for Peignot’s business.

The 1936 exhibition was held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and marked the first entrance of photography into the museum venue. This was thus a legitimization of the medium as an art form. However, this project was closely tied to Photographie 1936, and the publication largely determined the exhibition’s content and reception. Peignot even used the exhibition to boost the sales of and interest in his publications. I argue that this dominance of the publication over the exhibition indicates that, despite his active promotion throughout the

1930s, photography as such was of secondary importance to Peignot compared to his primary business in graphic art. His participation in the 1937 World’s Fair underscores this point. His contribution to the event concentrated on graphic works, including the provision of the Fair’s

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official letter design and the organization of the Imprimerie (printing) section as part of the

Fair’s official program. Photography was primed for institutionalization with the 1936 show, by its own merit. However, its independence from the graphic art context also meant that it was no longer at the hand of its supporters—publishers, graphic artists, and printers— including Peignot.

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Chapter 1

Photography for the Art of Graphics:

An Aestheticized Reception of Avant-Garde

In the fall of 1929, Charles Peignot opened Studio Deberny et Peignot, a studio for advertisement design and printing as vast as a “swimming pool”1 on his family’s property at

18 rue Ferrus in Paris’ fourteenth arrondissement.2 In combining facilities for a typesetting atelier, a photography studio, and a printing shop, the studio aimed to produce ready-to-use printing plates for advertising posters, brochures, pamphlets, and various kinds of printed matter for commercial and informative purposes. Peignot employed numerous artists and artisans in typesetting, photography, layout design, and printing. Among others, Peignot hired the French photographer Maurice Tabard (1897-1984) and put him in charge of the studio direction. Under Tabard's directorship, this design firm produced original works of publicity combining a bold use of typography with eye-catching photographic images (fig. 1-1). The establishment of this studio marked the beginning of Peignot’s serious engagement with photography, paving the way for his promotion of the medium in the decade to come.

Studio Deberny et Peignot quickly became a Parisian cultural hub where photographers, editors, printers, publishers, and designers met and exchanged new ideas. It

1 Maxilimien Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” Communication et langages 14 (1972): 57. It was of “la dimension d'une piscine.”

2 The exact date of the studio’s opening is unclear. However, considering that its opening announcement appeared in Arts et métiers graphiques 14, published on November 15, 1929, it is safe to say the studio started to operate in the fall of 1929, which occurred almost simultaneously with the Wall Street crash in October. Advertisement of Studio Deberny et Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 14 (November 1929): 177.

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also became an incubator for young photographers by providing a venue for their professional development and apprenticeship. Besides Tabard, the studio hired young talents who would soon become representative figures of the French photographic scene in the 1930s. As such, it prepared the ground for the development of interwar French photography. The Hungarian photographer Emeric Féher (1904-1966) joined the studio as a light technician in 1930 after studying under the French photographer René Zuber (1902-1979) and worked there until 1933.

Roger Parry (1905-1977), who was also working as an architecture decorator at the Printemps department store, served as an assistant of Tabard between 1929 and 1930. Rémy Duval

(1907-1984) was not only an in-house photographer for Deberny et Peignot, but soon became the most prolific photography critic in Arts et métiers graphiques. Pierre Boucher (1908-

2000), who would design the covers of Arts et métiers graphiques in the mid-1930s, entered

Deberny et Peignot in 1931 after interning at two Parisian design firms, Draeger Frères and

Atelier Alfred Tolmer. Finally, Maurice Cloche (1907-1990) was responsible for typesetting and layout before taking the camera and succeeding Tabard as the director of the studio after the latter's departure in 1932.

However, to appropriately understand the promotion of photography led by Charles

Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques in the 1930s, it is essential to consider the other half of this studio’s operation and Peignot’s primary concern, typography. Long before the opening of the studio, the Peignot family had been involved with the innovation of French typography since the late nineteenth century. Continuing his family’s business initiated by his grandfather,

Gustave Peignot, Charles Peignot led the modernization of French typography in the mid-

1920s. For this purpose, Peignot largely relied on the German avant-garde’s innovative theories and practices. Artists and typographers in interwar Germany, such as László Moholy-

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Nagy and Jan Tschichold, re-evaluated and reconsidered graphic art and design that includes typography. Photography was rediscovered by these avant-gardes as a quintessential content of modern graphic practices. Peignot’s establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot was directly influenced by such changes occurred in the neighboring country. Therefore, to consider and understand the background for Peignot’s promotion of photography from the late

1920s, it is first necessary to clarify his attitude toward typography and graphic art in general.

This first chapter will establish the foundation for the entire dissertation. First, it will overview the history of Deberny et Peignot typefoundry, Charles Peignot, and Arts et métier graphiques. It will then focus on Peignot’s effort to modernize French typography and his introduction of the German avant-garde to France. By examining Peignot’s involvement in the modernization of French graphic art in the mid- to late 1920s, this chapter will provide a basis for discussing the complex relationship between graphic art and photography in the following chapters.

Charles Peignot, Deberny et Peignot, and Arts et métiers graphiques

The History of Deberny et Peignot Typefoundry

Deberny et Peignot typefoundry was established in 1923 as a result of the merger of two French companies, Deberny and Peignot.3 Charles Peignot was born in 1897 as the first child and only son of Georges Peignot (1872-1915), the owner and director of the Peignot foundry, which was then known as G. Peignot et Fils. This company was started by Georges’ father, Gustave Peignot (1839-1899), in 1868. Gustave purchased a foundry of metal ingot

3 For a detailed historical account of Deberny et Peignot, see Amelia J. Hugill-Fontanel, “Publication of an Internet-Accessible Database Resources for Arts et Métiers Graphique” (master’s thesis, the Rochester Institute of Technology, 2002), 5-35. The same content is also on the web database of AMG created by Hugill-Fontanel. Hugill-Fontanel, “Arts et Métiers Graphiques Web,” accessed September 19, 2018, http://amgweb.rit.edu/

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established by a Frenchman, René Leclerc, for producing letter blocks. He first opened a shop on rue Domat in Paris’ fifth arrondissement before moving to 68 Boulevard Edgar-Quinet in

Montparnasse. Running the firm, Gustave enriched and expanded the foundry’s stock-in-trade by acquiring type blocks from failed French companies.4 After his sons joined him in the business, he named the company G. Peignot et Fils. When Gustave died in 1899, the company was taken over by Georges, Gustave’s second son, in 1900 because the first son, Robert

(1868-1913), suffered poor health that prevented him from working in the foundry.

Following his father's path, Georges kept expanding the business between 1900 and

1914. He absorbed other French typefoundries and acquired a body of classical French typefaces. He purchased the stock of Didot from Fonderie Général in 1912 and undertook punch cutting (the engraving and manufacturing of letter blocks) of the Imprimerie

Nationale’s Garamond. However, he was not satisfied with collecting and refining traditional faces. With ambitions to create an alphabet that corresponded to and represented the contemporary development of the arts, especially Art Nouveau, Georges actively engaged in producing new designs by collaborating with artists and designers. Among other collaborators,

Georges Auriol was the most outstanding partner. Peignot and Auriol released the iconic Art

Nouveau typeface named after the artist, Auriol, in 1901 (fig. 1-2). Curvilinear and decorative, this alphabet perfectly corresponded to Art Nouveau’s aesthetics for organic and elegant design. The Auriol font was followed by Robur, Claire de Lune, Bellery Desfontaines, and

Moreau le Jeune, with similarly decorative features. Georges also interacted with eminent printers, publishers, and engravers of the time, including Bernard Naudin and Georges Grasset.

The expansion of his business led him to open a new factory on rue Cabanis in the fourteenth

4 It includes the Fonderie Longien in 1881, and the Fonderie Conchard et David in 1892.

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arrondissement. He also acquired property on rue Ferrus, which later became the location of

Studio Deberny et Peignot. Working on both old and new typefaces and expanding his business, Georges made an unmatched contribution to the development of typography in early twentieth century France, and his effort made G. Peignot et Fils the largest and most prestigious typefoundry in the country. Charles recalls that the company thrived with fervor under Georges, who played a “dazzling role in the history of typography.”5

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 interrupted this golden age of the Peignot foundry. By 1916, Georges and all four of his brothers had perished, one after another, mostly on the Eastern front. The eldest, Robert, died in 1913 due to his weak health. The other four

Peignot brothers were called for military service, and all departed for the frontlines. André

(1878-1914) served as an infantry officer and succumbed in a battle against German troops on

September 25, 1914 in Chuignes, a village ten kilometers west of Pénonne in Somme. The youngest, Rémy (1888-1915) was killed in the same Somme sector on May 15, 1915, while

Georges reportedly died on September 28, in the battle at the north of Arras, between Souchez and Givenchy. Finally, Lucien (1884-1916), who was mobilized at Toulouse, passed away in

1916 from an illness he developed at the front.6

Because of this tragic loss of all the male family members, Georges’ only son, Charles, became the de facto successor to the typefoundry. After serving in the colonial infantry in

Africa, particularly in Morocco, he came back to Paris to enter the stage of apprenticeship in the firm to learn the family’s business in its entirety. He spent two years working in the

5 “Deberny et Peignot: La belle époque de la typographie,” Caractère (December 1975): 41. “Mon père a tenu un rôle éblouissant dans l'histoire de la typographie.”

6 In commemoration of these four brothers, a Parisian street was named Rue Quatre Frères Peignot in 1922. For details of this event, see Jean-Luc Froissart, L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb: L'épopée des Peignot, 1815- 1983 (Paris: Têkhnê, 2004), 292. This street is close to the Imprimerie Nationale.

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studio’s manufacturing ateliers as well as in the commercial service department under the supervision of Henri Menut, who was put in charge of the typefoundry’s administration after

Georges and the other Peignot brothers had departed for the front.

It was in this period that G. Peignot et Fils started to consider a merger with the

Deberny typefoundry. The origin of Deberny dates back to the early nineteenth century. Three

Frenchmen, François Laurent, Josephe Gillé, and J. L. Duplat, came together to start a typesetting enterprise. This business was eventually passed to Laurent in 1827. Meanwhile, in

1826, the young Honoré de Balzac installed a printing and publishing house with typesetter

André Barbier on Rue de Marais-Saint-Germain, aspiring to have a printing press at his disposal to distribute his own novels. Financially supported by his mistress, Madame de

Berny (Louise-Antoine-Laure de Berny, godchild of Marie-Antoinette), Balzac bought

Laurent’s typesetting company in 1827 and established the Imprimerie H. Balzac.

However, due mainly to the novelist’s extravagant lifestyle and the resulting financial neglect of his business, the company soon sank into debt. Madame de Berny took over the firm in 1828 and soon entrusted it to her son, Alexandre de Berny. He worked with Laurent, who was still in possession of the company’s stocks, until 1840, when he was able to purchase the latter’s stock share. With all control in the hands of Alexandre de Berny, this marked the official establishment of the Deberny foundry. During his long directorship, which lasted more than forty years, Alexandre expanded the business by purchasing the stocks of other companies, among which his 1836 purchase of the wood-engraved letter stocks of Pierre

Durouchail stands out.

When Alexandre died in 1881, his son, Charles Tuleu, inherited his post. Following his father’s path, Tuleu added numerous traditional typefaces to the company’s stock. As a

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result, Deberny ended up owning a series of Latin types—Néo-Elzéviennes, Série 16, and

Série 18—as well as a variety of calligraphic types. In 1914, the childless Tuleu sought a commercial partner and planned a merger with other foundries. He chose Peignot as a candidate because of his marriage to Jeanne Peignot, elder sister of Georges Peignot.

However, facing an obstinate refusal by Jeanne, who hated that her husband would serve to bolster her brother’s business, Tuleu gave up the collaboration. He relied instead on his old friend from school, Robert Girard, who eventually replaced Tuleu in 1921 when the latter died. Girard then renamed the foundry Girard et Cie.

The plan of merging Deberny and Peignot reemerged in the 1920s. Girard, Menut,

Pierre Payet (Charles Peignot’s cousin in charge of the commercial and financial matters of the Peignot typefoundry) and Charles agreed on the unification of the two companies. They believed it to be the best possibility for survival in confronting the difficult economic situation in the immediate post-World War I period. On July 1, 1923, the two foundries were incorporated as Deberny et Peignot. Because the Peignot foundry had already been one of the largest of its kind under Georges’ directorship, this merger made Deberny et Peignot the genuinely dominant company in the manufacture of typefaces in France. The company owned an enormous collection of letter blocks that the past directors had accumulated over decades.

Deberny was particularly strong in classic punches and matrices, while Peignot owned sophisticated modern faces launched by Georges. Operating two factories in Paris and

Courneuve, Deberny et Peignot became the “heart of the French printing.”7

7 Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” 45. “Le cœur de l'imprimerie française.”

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Charles Peignot and the Establishment of Arts et Métiers Graphiques

One may anticipate that Charles Peignot would have taken over as director at G.

Peignot et Fils and then Deberny et Peignot, since he was Georges’ heir. However, while he was working as a maquettiste (designer of maquettes for publication) during his apprenticeship, Peignot found that his interest and passion lay in the artistic aspect of typography and graphic art rather than in the management of the company’s administrative and commercial matters. He thus left this role to Menut, Girard, and Payet and took the post of artistic director.

This occupation brought him into contact with the artistic and intellectual milieus in

France and abroad. He soon became famous in Parisian high society. Born in the family running France’s largest typefoundry and given a wealthy upbringing, Peignot was an enfant gâté (spoiled child), as his nephew Jean-Luc Froissart describes him.8 According to Froissart,

Peignot exemplified Parisian extravagance in the interwar period. Peignot’s contemporaries expressed similar opinions. For instance, Georges Bataille, who once was the lover of a younger sister of Peignot’s, Colette, recalled, “for me, this family name [Peignot] meant the

Parisian orgies of her brother, which people have told me about several times.”9 Peignot's lifelong collaborator and business partner Maximilien Vox said that Peignot “carried around the chic allure of ‘snobbery’ particular to the Parisian gilded society, and it was backed up by

8 Froissart, L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb, 250-257.

9 Colette Peignot was a poet and writer working under the pseudonym Laure and belonged to the Surrealists circle around Bataille. Cited in ibid., 289. “Son nom avait pour moi le sens des orgies parisiennes de son frère dont on m'avait plusieurs fois parlé.”

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his stable fortune.”10 His flamboyant lifestyle “lacked nothing of the solemnity of Parisian dolce vita.”11

Living in a posh apartment located at 5 Quai de Voltaire on the Left Bank of Paris, just across the Seine from the entrance of the Louvre, he mingled with prominent social figures, writers, artists, and intellectuals in the city. His wife Suzanne Rivière was a soprano singer closely connected to the Groupe des Six, the association of French composers that included Georges Auric, Darius Milhauld, and Francis Poulenc. Peignot invited and welcomed musicians, artists, decorators, architects, and ensembliers both to his apartment in

Paris and to a chateau at Gauville the family owned. The list of his friends and acquaintances goes on almost infinitely and seems to include almost every name we come up with when we imagine the intellectual elites and artists of interwar Paris: Jean Cocteau, Léon-Paul Fargue,

Eric Satie, Louis Aragon, André Breton, Paul Morand, Tristan Tzara, Constantin Brancusi,

Pablo Picasso, Francis Picabia, Michel de Brunhoff, Lucien Vogel, Raul Dufy, René Herbst,

Robert Mallet-Stevens, Le Corbusier, and Blaise Cendrars. It was through this extensive network that Peignot learned the latest trends and currents of the artistic and industrial worlds.

Vox stated that Peignot was “first of all, a distinguished businessman—who caught the swirl of news with his arms wide open.”12 In so doing, Peignot refined his artistic taste and fostered an ambition to modernize and promote typography and graphic art in France, of which his company was one of the central organs.

10 Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” 46. He “apportait le chic d'une ‘snoberie’ parisienne et dorée, étayée sur une fortune assise.”

11 Ibid., 54. “il se manquait aucune des solennités de la dolce vita parisiennes.”

12 Ibid., 56. “... d'abord un comerçant insigne—captant à pleines brassées les remous de l'actualité.”

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To fulfill this ambition, Peignot started a publishing house that was financially independent of the typefoundry.13 In 1926, he co-founded Société Arts et Métiers Graphiques with 400,000 francs in capital and a headquarters at 3 Rue Séguier, close to his domicile in the sixth arrondissement. This company’s mission was the publication of a magazine, which was released in a year as Arts et métiers graphiques, and bibliophilic books. The co-founders were four experienced publishers and printers who all took a seat on the editorial board of the magazine: H. L. Motti, the director of Imprimerie Vaugirard that printed the majority of Arts et métiers graphiques; Léon Pichon, printer and publisher of art books; Walter Seymour Maas, the head of the Dorland advertisement agency; and Lucien Vogel, the progressive and influential publisher of fashion magazines and future director of the seminal illustrated weekly VU (1928-1939).

Froissart states that it was Vogel who recommended that Peignot start a publishing company. Vogel was of Georges’ age and had been close to the Peignot family since the latter’s tenure. Vogel and Georges collaborated in 1912 when they simultaneously released the former’s fashion magazine Gazette du bon ton and the latter’s Cochin typeface.14 Charles and Vogel officially met in 1917 in Marrakesh during World War I, where Vogel served in the department of photography in the Colonial Army under the order of General Lyautey.

When both returned to Paris after their military service, Vogel became a mentor for Charles.

He introduced the younger man to the Parisian high society and artistic worlds since Vogel was a giant in the city’s fashion industry.15 Directing his magazines—Le Jardin des modes

13 Ibid., 47.

14 “Les Peignot: Georges, Charles, par Charles Peignot,” Communication et langages 59 (1984): 61-85.

15 Froissart, L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb, 301. Peignot and Vogel maintained a good relationship and had many mutual friends, including Erik Satie. Peignot’s mother Suzanne did not like Vogel and warned her son not

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and Gazette du bon ton—and the French edition of Vogue, published by Condé Nast, Vogel was the face of Parisian chic. His influence on Charles was significant, and it is safe to say that Vogel was almost always responsible for important decisions Charles made regarding publishing and photography between the late 1920s and early 1930s.

The first issue of Arts et métiers graphiques was released on September 15, 1927. The magazine lasted twelve years. The pace of publication was bimonthly until issue 55

(November 1936), with six numbers published per year. It then slowed to five issues a year and remained so until the final issue, number 68, released on March 15, 1939. The operation of the magazine’s publishing house, Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, was then interrupted by the mobilization of Paris for the Second World War.

Arts et métiers graphiques’ circulation was based principally on both French and international subscriptions. The French photo historian Françoise Denoyelle explains that one- third of the magazine’s readers resided outside of France in the United States, Great Britain,

Germany, and Central and Eastern Europe.16 The number of copies for each issue is unclear.

Scholars have proposed a range between 3,000 and 5,000. In a letter to his sister Colette in

1930, Peignot mentioned that he printed 3,000 copies for each issue, which is the most reliable data about this point.17 However, the count could change according to the magazine’s varying financial situation and popularity.

to be connected with this man, according to the correspondence in Peignot’s archives at the Bibliothèque Forney. Don Froisart, Box 5, Charles, Dossiers: Correspondances, Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris.

16 Françoise Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques: Histoire d’images d’une revue de charactère,” La Recherche photographique 3 (December 1987): 17.

17 Fonds Colette Peignot, D6-53, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Correspondance 1930, Letter from Charles to Colette. Charles Peignot says, “Le tirage actuel de la Revue est de 3000 examplaires.”

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Arts et métiers graphiques was conceived to focus on “the art of the book, printing and all the enterprises regarding publishing and advertisement.”18 The statute of the magazine drafted in 1926 specified that this aim was set in response to the growing public interest and demand for printed matters and graphic design, especially among industrialists, as French society recovered from the economic hardships caused by the First World War. With the development of capitalist society and consumerism in the 1920s, printing and publicity became ever more critical for better advertisement of industrial products. This socioeconomic change stimulated interest in the arts and crafts of printing and publishing. However, except for a few magazines of specialist interest destined exclusively for an expert readership such as

Vendre, L'Affiche, and Le Bulletin des Maîtres imprimeurs, no single publication managed to fulfill this growing demand. The statute of Arts et métiers graphiques reads:

Yet, France, in the present time, is one of the rare countries that does not possess a means to connect this ceaselessly growing clientele and those who work for it: artists, artisans, and manufacturers. Except for some purely trade publications, nothing can provide information on the research, new products and features, and possibilities of a series of complex professions, of which they are mostly unaware. The magazine “Arts et Métiers Graphiques,” the first volume of which will appear the coming fall, will be such a means awaited by all those who appreciate beautiful publications.19

Following this principle, the magazine published encyclopedic articles on printing and graphic design. The headings of its articles include “History of the Book and Printing,”

“Bibliophila and Contemporary Books,” “Typography in foreign countries,” and “Publicity,”

18 Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, XI, Statute of Arts et métiers graphiques, 1926. It was for the “arts du Livre et l'imprimerie et toutes entreprises d'édition et de publicité.”

19 Fonds Peignot, XI, Programme de Arts et métiers graphiques. “Or, la France est, à l'heure actuelle, l'un des rares pays ne possédant pas un organe de liaison entre cette clientèle, sans cesse grandissante et les hommes: artistes, artisans, industriels, qui travaillent pour elle. En dehors de quelques publications purement corporatives, rien ne peut la documenter sur les recherches, les nouveautés et les possibilités d'une série de professions complexes et dont elle ignore la plupart des éléments. La revue ‘Arts et Métiers Graphiques,’ dont le premier numéro paraîtra l'automne prochain, sera cet organe attendu de tous les amis de la belle impression. ”

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to name but a few.20 Each category encompasses extensive types of artifacts and topics such as book design, printing techniques and machines, the typography of the past and present, the history of letters and writing, posters, promotional leaflets, photographs, gramophone records, animation, playing cards, autographs, and even the design of labels of champagne. The nature of these articles are as various as their subjects, including technical explanations and practical instructions of a printing technique, historical accounts of typeface designs, and more theoretical and philosophical essays on each subject. The magazine also published special issues, among which two annual publications on photography (Photographie)21 and publicity

(Publicité)22 stand out. These specials featured the latest works of the respective fields of graphic practice, and both came to be recognized as the essential publications of Arts et métiers graphiques.23

Arts et métiers graphiques was a magazine with highly sophisticated and intellectual literary content. Its texts were written by prominent writers, critics, and intellectuals of interwar France who were part of Peignot’s network. For instance, the first essay in the first issue, “Les Deux vertus d’un livre” (“The Two Virtues of a Book”), was written by Paul

Valéry, perhaps the representative figure of French culture and intelligence in the interwar

20 Other categories include “Technique,” “Book Illustration, Plastic Arts, Drawing, Prints, Caricature,” “Photography and Photographer,” and “Variety.”

21 This volume first appeared as AMG 16 in March 1930 and continued annually until 1939. It will be further discussed in chapter 2.

22 Publicité was first published as AMG 42 in August 1934 and, following the pattern of Photographie, numbered five volumes between 1934 and 1939.

23 Other special titles are, “Le Livre d'art international,” AMG 26 (November 1931), “Caricature,” AMG 31 (September 1932), “Victor Hugo,” AMG 47 (July 1935), “Les Arts et les techniques graphiques,” AMG 59 (September 1937), “Les plus beaux manuscrits français et peintures du moyen âge,” AMG 60 (November 1937), and “Expositions Internationales, Paris 1937-New York 1939,” AMG 62 (March 1938).

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period. Other authors include Jean Cocteau, Philippe Soupault, Louis Chéronnet, and André

Malraux, to name but a few. As a result of this literary sophistication and the highly intellectual quality of the texts, the magazine was favorably received by the elite audience.

Although it was conceived to target clienteles and practitioners in the printing industry, it was, in reality, almost inaccessible for this intended audience. And, indeed, as the French graphic art historian Hélène Dufour notes, there was almost no printers and print artisans in its list of subscribers.24

The high price of the magazine also made it almost exclusively available for a limited audience. Each issue was sold at thirty francs within France (150 francs for a yearly subscription) and forty francs abroad (210 francs yearly). The price was even raised by five francs in November 1936. This change coincided with a decrease in the number of issues per year. As a result, the fee for the yearly subscription remained the same. If we consider that a copy of an illustrated weekly sold at a local newsstand for only two francs, the price of Arts et métiers graphiques was well beyond the reach of the average and mass audience.

The refinement of the publication’s material quality made the magazine an expensive venture. Peignot aimed to make Arts et métiers graphiques “the most interesting and luxurious art magazine in the world.”25 Accordingly, Peignot and the magazine’s editors carefully conceived its material presentation and exquisitely executed each volume. It was a

24 Hélène Dufour, “Arts et Métiers Graphiques 1927-1939,” Arts et métiers du livre 188 (November-December 1994): 3-32.

25 “A nos lecteurs,” Arts et métiers graphiques 6 (July 1928): n.p. “Nous nous efforcerons d'en faire la revue d'art la plus intéressante et la plus luxueuse du monde.”

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relatively large publication in the format of in-4to raisan26 (24.5 x 31 cm), and each volume had seventy to eighty pages. Froissart describes the “laws of perfection” of the magazine:

Charles and his collaborators try hard to choose for each text or illustration the font, page layout, ink, and medium that are most appropriate for the subject. They do not hesitate to use, if necessary, a type of paper with metallic finish, pink Canson paper, tricolor shading, and to import a gothic lettering used for titles from Germany, or to print an original wood engraving in several similar shades. Expensive but superb!27

The perfection of quality was made possible not only by the director and founders, but also by the editorial staff composed of outstanding professionals from the French publishing and printing industry. The first editor in chief was Marcel Astruc (AMG 2 and 3), who was soon replaced by François Haab (AMG 4-41). When Haab resigned in 1934, because he did not get along with Peignot, André Lejard took over and remained at the post until the last issue (AMG 42-68). The magazine’s innovative page layout was at times entrusted to prominent artists such as Alexei Brodovitch, a renowned graphic designer who worked as an artistic director for the advertisement and window displays of a Parisian department store,

Trois Quartiers. He also belonged to the renowned design studio Atelier Tolmer until he left for the United States to take the position of chief artistic director of Harper’s Bazaar in 1934.

His page design for some articles in Arts et métiers graphiques (fig. 1-3) employed unconventional layouts that consisted of bold use of illustration and the free arrangement of images on double-page spreads to actively engage the reader’s gaze. Besides such

26 In-4to raisin is one of the traditional printing formats. See Froissart, L'Or, l'âme et les cendres du plomb, 373.

27 Ibid., 303. “Charles et ses collaborateurs s'ingénient à choisir pour chaque texte ou illustration le caractère, la mise en page, l'encre, le support qui conviennent le mieux au sujet. Ils n'hésitent pas à utiliser au besoin un papiers métallisé, un Canson rose, un dégradé trichrome, à importer d'Allemagne la gothique d'un titre, à tirer en camaïeu une gravure sur bois originaux. Coûteux mais somptueux!”

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collaborative projects, many of the layouts were undertaken by Vox and the typographer and art book publisher Henri Jonquières.

Deberny et Peignot typefoundry experienced financial hardship during the Depression that started to affect France in 1931 because of the rising price of lead used for producing type blocks. Despite this, Arts et métiers graphiques, financially independent of the typefoundry, retained its high brow editorial principle and the quality of its material presentation, which constitutes much of its appeal. The magazine was thus almost impervious to the constantly changing social, economic, and political environments in France in the tumultuous 1930s.

Indeed, the magazine and publications from Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques never became socially or politically engaged. It remained nonchalant, elegant, and detached, with its sophistication and bourgeois French elitism.

Innovating Typography in France

Supported by the French intellectual elites, Arts et métiers graphiques aimed to propagate the achievements of French art and culture internationally. The statute of the company in 1926 reads, “By its universality, by the high literary quality that will be provided by the eminent collaborators with whom the magazine intends to associate itself, ‘Arts et

Métiers Graphiques’ will quickly impose itself in the entire world, and will effectively serve the cause of French culture and art.”28 This emphasis on its “French” quality indicates that the founders conceived the magazine as asserting the presence of France in the international art scene. This principle attests to the conservative and growingly nationalistic cultural climate of

28 The statute of Arts et métiers graphiques, Fonds Peignot. “Par son universalité, par la haute tenue littéraire que lui assureront les collaborateurs éminents dont elle veut s'entourer, la revue ‘Arts et Métiers Graphiques’ s'imposera rapidement dans le monde entier, et servira efficacement la cause de la culture et de l'art française.”

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interwar France. However, Arts et métiers graphiques never took a politically aggressive stance and remained cosmopolitan throughout its entire run, covering diverse issues of graphic art and design both in France and abroad. Its “universality” allowed the magazine to be both French and international at once.29 In what international context, then, did Arts et métiers graphiques try to intervene? And what "French" quality did it try to insist upon?

Charles Peignot and the German Avant-Garde

It was to the modernization of graphic art, especially typography, in the German avant-garde that Arts et métiers graphiques attempted to respond to in the first place. Graphic arts and design significantly progressed in Europe in the 1920s, fueled by such art movements as Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Constructivism. Germany became the epicenter for this transformation. The Bauhaus, established by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, developed new aesthetics, theories, and artistic practices that corresponded to the increasingly mechanized and industrialized society. After its move to Dessau in 1925, the school proposed an innovative form of art that was fully integrated into the industrial process of production, with an aspiration to reincorporate art into the realm of life. Such tenets evoked a renewed interest in graphic art to change the traditional artistic hierarchy dominated by painting.

Graphic practices served for and stuck to people’s daily lives and environments. As such, it was considered an ideal vehicle for making art available to all people.

Typography was the most essential element for this reformation. It was deemed to perfectly incarnate an ideal of utilitarian art that was collective, standardized, and democratic.

29 I will discuss the issue of nationalism more in detail in chapter 3.

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Because letters could reside in various media and formats and was widely spread across society, typography possessed the capacity to disseminate new aesthetics and educate people about the new understanding of art. This reconsideration of typography was advanced by those associated with the New Typography movement. Within and outside the Bauhaus, theorists, graphic artists, and typographers of this trend, including Jan Tschichold, Paul

Renner, and Rudolf Koch, aspired to rationalize the use of letters and integrate it into industrial processes of standardization to maximize the communicative capacity of the writing.

Contemporary French editors and publishers recognized the rise of new aesthetics and practices in Germany around 1929-30, as the French graphic art historian Roxane Jubert points out.30 For instance, the influential art magazine Cahiers d'art, directed by Christian

Zervos, dedicated an article to the Bauhaus and its innovative classes of publicity design and photography by Joost Schmidt and Hans Peterhans, respectively. The magazine also published an essay on photography by Moholy-Nagy in 1929.31 The works by the Bauhaus were presented for the first time in 1930 in the German section exhibit of the Deutscher Werkbund at the Grand Palais. This show, organized by Gropius and assisted by Marcel Breuer, Herbert

Bayer, and Moholy-Nagy, gave the French audience a firsthand experience of the advancement of graphic art in the neighboring country.

Arts et métiers graphiques also functioned as one of the principle conduits for the

German avant-garde in France. Peignot reportedly visited the Bauhaus in the early 1930s,

30 Roxane Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context: Typography and Graphic Design in France,” trans. John Cullars, Design Issues 22 (no. 4, Autumn 2006): 70.

31 Will Grohmann, “Une école d'art moderne: Le ‘Bauhaus’ de Dessau: Académie d'une plastique nouvelle,” Cahiers d'art 5 (1930): 273-4, and László Moholy-Nagy, “La Photographie, ce qu'elle était, ce qu'elle devra être,” Cahiers d'art 4 (1929): 28-33.

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where he met and conversed with Gropius.32 The magazine published the translation of a text by Tschichold, “Qu'est-ce que la nouvelle typographie? et que veut-elle?” (“What Is the New

Typography? and What Does It Want?”) in 1930 (AMG 19, July 1930).33 Tschichold conceived modern concepts of typography and printing in his Die Neue Typographie, published in 1928, which made him a spokesman of the movement. His essay in Arts et méiters graphiques introduced the essence of his theory developed in the book. Tschichold explains the new models and principles not only of typography but also of printing in general.

By advocating the advancement of printing techniques and the industrialization of society, he insists on the use of “non-historical” elements unbound by convention:

[T]ypographic composition instead of hand-drawn writing, photos instead of drawings, photomechanical prints instead of wood engravings, machine typesetting instead of typesetting by hand (at least for ordinary text), paper processed by machine instead of paper made in a vat, a rotary press instead of a hand press, standardization instead of individualization, etc.34

Here, Tschichold anticipates and advocates the total transformation of printing from manual to mechanical means, which became the fundamental tenet for changes in the graphic art in avant-garde. Tschichold’s article in Arts et métiers graphiques is illustrated with avant-garde graphic works. Moholy-Nagy’s photomontage study and Johannes Molzahn’s designs for tourist posters (fig. 1-4) stand out among other illustrations. Expressively combining photographic images and bold arrangements of letters, these two works embodied the new aesthetics and techniques in graphic art.

32 Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context,” 69.

33 Jan Tschichold, “Qu’est ce que la nouvelle typographie,” Arts et métiers graphiques 19 (September, 1930): 46-52.

34 Ibid., 49. “... composition typographique au lieu de l'écriture dessinée à la main, photo au lieu de dessin, cliché photomécanique au lieu de gravure sur bois, composition à la machine au lieu de composition à la main (du moins pour le texte ordinaire), papier à la machine au lieu de papier à la cuve, presse rotative au lieu de presse à la main, normalisation au lieu d'individualisation, etc.”

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Beyond Tschichold’s article, Arts et métiers graphiques featured progressive designs of advertisements, books, posters, and magazines produced by German, Soviet, Eastern and

Central European artists and artisans in the late 1920s. Examples include book designs by the renowned Czech typographer and bookmaker Karel Teige (AMG 4, April 1928) (fig. 1-5); the poster design for the film Laster der Menschheit (The Vice of Humanity, directed by Rudolf

Meinert in 1927) by Tschichold (AMG 11, May 1929) (fig. 1-6); El Lissitzky’s poster for the

Soviet art exhibition held in Zurich’s Kunstgewergemuseum in 1929 (AMG 12, July 1929)

(fig. 1-7); Bayer’s cover design of Die Neue Linie, the lifestyle magazine edited by the

Bauhaus (AMG 20, November 1930) (fig. 1-8); and excerpts from Josef Pecsi’s Photo und

Publizität published in 1930 (AMG 20) (fig. 1-9). It was in this context of avant-garde graphic progress that Arts et métiers graphiques tried to intervene and assert the presence of French creations.

Peignot was well informed of the changing environment surrounding graphic practices and theories in Germany through publishers, typographers, and graphic artists in the country who were connected to his vast social network. Among others, the German graphic art magazine Gebrauchsgraphik (1924-1938) (fig. 1-10) and its director H. K. Frenzel provided

Peignot with a principal channel to access the latest news and creations in Germany and its neighboring countries. This bimonthly German magazine, which began three years before

Arts et métiers graphiques, was a model for the French periodical both in content and format.35 Its title is a unique expression in the German language that encompasses a wide range of practices in printing and the graphic professions. René Zuber described that the

Gebrauchsgraphiker (one who engaged in Gebrauchsgraphik) as a man who was “at once

35 For the details of Gebrauchsgraphik, see Jeremy Aynsley, “‘Gebrauchsgraphik’ as an Early Graphic Design Journal, 1924-1938,” Journal of Design History 5 (no. 1, 1992): 53-72.

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illustrator, draftsman of publicity or fashion drawing, of wallpaper, engraver, poster painter, bookbinder, or typographer,” which is to say, “a man who makes use of the graphic elements.”36 Zuber's list of subjects directly reflected what the magazine Gebrauchsgraphik covered and how it overlapped with Arts et métiers graphiques. Having shared interests,

Peignot and Frenzel communicated by cross-publishing their articles and printing advertisements for each other in their own magazines.37

Besides Frenzel, the other key figure who informed Peignot of the developments of the German graphic art scene was the photographer Zuber. After graduating the École

Centrale des Arts et Manufactures de Paris (The Central School of Arts and Manufactures in

Paris) in 1924, Zuber moved to Germany and spent two semesters in 1927-28 at the

Hochschule für Graphische Künste und Buchwesen (The School for Graphic Arts and Books) in the city of Leipzig, the center of German bookmaking. As a correspondent of Arts et métiers graphiques in Germany, Zuber reported not only on the advanced curriculum of the school, which incorporated such novel techniques and materials for graphic design as photomontage, but also on the events in the country.38

Most importantly, Zuber provided a review of Pressa, the famous international press exhibition held in Cologne between May and October 1928.39 This event showcased the

36 René Zuber, “L'Académie des arts et métiers graphiques de Leipzig,” Arts et métiers graphiques 7 (September 1928): 431. “. . . un mot qui puisse serivir à designer à la fois un illustrateur, un dessinateur de publicité ou de mode ou de papiers peints, un graveur, un peintre d'affiches, un relieur ou un typographe. . . . Gebrauchsgraphiker, un homme qui se sert de la graphiques. . .”

37 H. K. Frenzel, “Affiches électrales allemandes,” Arts et métiers graphiques 7 (September 1928): 446-451; Frenzel, “L'Exposition de la publicité à Berlin,” Arts et métier graphiques 13 (September 1929): 796-99. AMG also issued an obituary when Frenzel died in 1938. “Notes et Echos,” Arts et métiers graphiques 61 (January 1938): 58.

38 René Zuber, “L'Académie des arts et métiers graphiques de Leipzig,” 429-435.

39 René Zuber, “Pressa Cologne,” Arts et métiers graphiques 8 (November 1928): LXXXVI-XCIII.

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development and achievement of the modern press, advertising, and publishing industries.40

Among other exhibits, the Soviet pavilion curated by Lissitzky (fig. 1-11) epitomized the innovative use of enlarged photographs and photomontages directly applied to the wall in combination with bold typographic arrangements. The catalogue of the pavilion also impressed the visitor with its use of photography, which transposed the wall display onto paper, as well as its surprising design and format, including a long fold-out with photomontages (fig. 1-12).41

Contrary to such advancement of the international graphic art scene in Europe in

Pressa, French creations remained conventional. Zuber criticized the French exhibit in the same exhibition: “As for the French, they strictly limited themselves to presenting their newspapers, their periodicals, and some of their rich retrospective documents. No posters like the Swiss exhibit, no machines like the United States, nor ideological statements like

Czechoslovakia. This is unfortunate.”42

This backwardness of French graphic production was most blatant in the fields of typography and printing.43 The Exposition Internationale des arts décoratifs et industries modernes (The International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries) held in

40 For more details on Pressa, see Jaremy Aynsley, “‘Pressa’ Cologne, 1928: Exhibitions and Publication Design in the Weimar Period,” Design Issues 10 (no. 3 Autumn 1994): 53-76.

41 Lissitzky’s photomurals and photography in the public sphere became a new standard in the 1930s. It was the first monument of what Jorge Ribalta calls “public photographic spaces,” which later developed into photomurals that culminated in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. I will discuss the issue of photography exhibitions further in chapter 4. See Jorge Ribalta, “Introduction,” in Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to The Family of Man 1928-55 (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2008), 11-26.

42 Zuber, “Pressa Cologne,” XCI. “Les Français, eux, s'en sont tenus étroitement à la présentation de leurs journaux, de leurs périodiques et de quelques-uns de leurs riches documents rétrospectifs. Ni affiches comme la Suisse, ni machines comme l'Amérique, ni témoignages idéologiques comme la Tchéco-Slovaquie. On a le droit de le regretter.”

43 Michel Wlassikoff, The Story of Graphic Design in France (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2005), 65.

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Paris in 1925 embodied the aesthetics of the Art Déco style in the decorative, applied, and graphic arts, especially in poster design, but not in typography or printing. Peignot was disappointed by the fair’s exhibits of typography, which he judged to be no more than a

“byproduct of the fin-de-siècle.”44 This situation sharply contrasted with the theoretical advancement of the New Typography proposed by Tschichold and its integration into modern media represented by the works of Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, and other progressive artists. The contact with the international graphic art scene thus inspired and urged Peignot toward the modernization and innovation of typography in France by absorbing the tenets and aesthetics of avant-garde.

The Reserved Acquisition of Futura

However, as Jubert observes, the reception of the advanced German typography in

France came with a certain reservation and hesitance, which is symbolically seen in the acquisition of a German typeface Futura by Deberny et Peignot.45 To break through the belatedness of French typography, Peignot decided to acquire Futura (fig. 1-13). This geometric sans-serif alphabet was designed by the German typographer Paul Renner and released by the Bauer typefoundry in Frankfurt in 1927. Since Peignot’s father and his three uncles were killed by German troops in the First World War, this decision appears to be courageous. It conversely points to the profound stagnation of French typography, since they had no choice but to rely on their former enemy’s production. Politically speaking, the year

44 Peignot’s comment, cited in Stephen Heller, “The Man behind the Face,” Print 40 (March-April 1986): 62.

45 Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context.”

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1927 was the greatest rapprochement between France and Germany after the Great War, which facilitated Peignot’s decision to directly negotiate with Germans.

Futura was conceived in the middle of the New Typography movement. In the course of this renewal that aimed at the rationalization of typographic design and printing, traditional

Gothic characters were abandoned, and geometric non-decorated roman typefaces gained currency. Futura was one such new letter design.46 Its unornamented and streamlined sans- serif contours embodied machine aesthetics. Clear-cut and sober, it also represented the functionalism of industrialized and standardized processes of production. It thus responded to the contemporary demand for an alphabet for the new age. The name “Futura,” or future, reflected such expectations.

It was one of Peignot’s main collaborators, Vox, who strongly insisted on the acquisition of this German typeface. Vox was a man with multiple faces and occupations. He was an artist, typographer, illustrator, book designer, and publisher, all at the same time. The word Gebrauchsgraphiker is perhaps the best expression to describe his role. Working for several Parisian printing firms and publishers, including Grasset, Plon, and Horizons de

France, Vox created a number of innovative book cover designs in the 1920s. He was also internationally recognized, awarded the Prix Florence Blumenthal, the biennale prize of an

American foundation for the active and intellectual accomplishments in France.47 Peignot met

Vox in 1924, when the latter came to Deberny et Peignot to examine the company’s stock for

46 Michel Wlassikoff, “Futura, Europe and Photography” (based on a paper presented at the symposium Photo- graphics, at Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 2007, article published online), accessed August 28, 2018, http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/Photographisme_GB.pdf., 36-37. Also see Jubert, “The Bauhaus Context,” 70. Renner was not a member of the Bauhaus, but his design came to embody the school's ideal vision on the new typography. Its members also conceived unpublished experimental alphabets such as Universal by Herbert Bayer and Kombinationsschrift by Josef Albers.

47 René Ponot, “Maximilen Vox, le typographe” in Maximilien Vox: Un Homme de lettre, ed. Frédéric Contini (Paris: Bibliothèque des Arts Graphiques, 1994), 63.

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a book cover he was undertaking at Bernard Grasset. Vox shared the same critical outlook on the contemporary graphic art and typographic scene in France with Peignot, which made the two almost inseparable. In acknowledging Vox's career and ability, Peignot appointed him the official “engineer-typographer” of Deberny et Peignot in 1927, which enabled Vox to realize the “totality of his typographic conceptions.”48

Vox was aware of the value and contemporaneity of Futura and strongly recommended that Deberny et Peignot purchase its marketing rights. He even considered resigning if they would not accept his proposal.49 Peignot recalls that one day, Vox came to the office and said, “If you do not buy Futura, I will work in another place.”50 The other administrating members of the foundry, especially Girard and Payet, did not find Futura novel, considering it was almost the same as their stock of “angular antique” typefaces. It was

Peignot who did not underestimate its novelty, as he was well informed of German avant- garde practices, and decided to purchase it. After negotiations with the Bauer foundry in

Frankfurt, Deberny et Peignot obtained the marketing rights for Futura not only in France and its colonies, but also in Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Switzerland in 1929. They then renamed Futura “Europe” and launched it the following year in three fonts of different boldness as the “typeface of our age.”51 Mainly employed for display lettering, Europe soon became popular and widely accepted in interwar France. It became the most successful

48 Ibid., 64. “. . . je dois d'avoir pu réaliser la totalité de mes conceptions typographiques.” He also wrote many articles on the innovation of graphic art in the magazine. See for instance, Maximilen Vox, “Le livre contemporain: justification” in Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 37-44.

49 Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” 58.

50 Charles Peignot, “Hommage à Maximilien Vox,” Arts et métiers du livre 85, (no. 54, January-February, 1975): 9. “Si vous n'achetez pas le Futura, j'ira travailler ailleurs.”

51 Bertrand Guégan, “Futura,” Arts et métiers graphiques 6 (July 1928): 388.

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commercial font of Deberny et Peignot since Cochin was published by Georges Peignot and

Vogel in the pre-World War I period.

Although the acquisition of Futura symbolically represents the influence and absorption of the German avant-garde in France, its treatment and application point to potential issues in this process of modernization. Futura was more or less problematic because

Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques, and Deberny et Peignot all aimed at the promotion of

“French” art. Vox states, “In order to pursue and complete the renovation of the image of the letter in France, we have to resort to the use of a foreign typeface.”52 Despite the ambition to propagate and innovate French typography, the decisive step for its modernization was taken by an imported alphabet designed by a foreigner, Renner. To make matters worse, they had to rely on an alphabet made in Germany. As Kenneth Silver’s seminal study on interwar French art elucidates, German modernism was counterposed to French classicism and relegated in the conservative cultural climate of the rappel à l’ordre of the 1920s.53 Renaming Futura “Europe” was a measure to avert possible oppositions by giving it a sense of universalism. However, as the French graphic art historian Michel Wlassikoff legitimately questions, “How was it possible to talk about Europe without pronouncing the word Futura, or mentioning Renner?”54

The prolific art critic Bertrand Guégan expressed his ambivalence toward the German alphabet with a nationalistic overtone in 1928. Before the purchase of Futura was complete,

Arts et métiers graphiques introduced it to the reader with Guégan’s essay. He assessed the

52 Maximilien Vox, Divertissement Typographique 4 (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1931), n.p. Translation is based on Wlassikoff, “Futura, Europe and Photography,” 39.

53 Kenneth Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

54 Wlassikoff, “Futura, Europe and Photography,” 40.

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letter’s relevance because it was “stylized, free from typographic traditions and adapted to some of our taste and needs.”55 Although he appreciated that Futura would create interesting publicity design and posters as a display type, Guégan claimed this alphabet would be unsuitable for running text for reading because of its compact design, which resembled the

“Gothic of the fifteenth century.” He continued, “M. Renner states that he established the proportions of these letters according to the frequent use of capital letters in German texts. We know that all the substantives begin with a capital letter in German. Therefore, a page of

French text printed in Futura would not be very pleasant to look at.” 56 He discussed the difference in notation systems between the two languages and judged Futura inappropriate for texts in French. However, this passage clearly shows his reluctance to absorb the German product for the renewal of French typography on nationalistic grounds. Futura, as one of the

New Typography’s creations, was conceived against the persistence of gothic letters in

Germany. Thus, Guégan’s reference to gothic alphabets should be interpreted as a nationalist stereotyping and distortion of the original concept of this newly designed German typeface.

Guégan's criticism affected the areas of Europe’s application after its release in 1930.

Its use in France was limited to display type, and it was not employed in the running text in books. Renner originally intended Futura for every conceivable kind of support, ranging from the traditional book to modern wall-sized advertisements and road signs. In Germany, Futura was seen not only in posters and brochures, but also in magazine articles. For example,

Gebrauchsgraphik began using it for its running text in 1929. Nevertheless, in France, as

55 Guégan, “Futura,” 388.

56 Ibid. “D'ailleurs M. Renner déclare qu'il a déterminé les proportions de ses lettres d'après la fréquence des capitales dans les textes allemands, et l'on sait que tous les substantifs y commencent par une majuscule! C'est dire qu'une page de français imprimée en Futura ne serait pas très agréable à regarder.”

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Guégan questioned its legibility, Futura/Europe was generally not adopted in the text, even in

Arts et métiers graphiques, apart from some exceptional occasions.57

I argue that the rejection of Futura/Europe for running text was based on the privileged status of the book medium in the program of Arts et métiers graphiques. As the Belgium literary scholar Kristof van Gansen discusses, bookmaking was one of the primary concerns and missions of Arts et métiers graphiques.58 The magazine not only embraced the bibliophilism of beaux livres and established an elitist bibliophile society, L’Epreuve, in 1933, but also focused on promoting popular editions. The first, thus keynote, article of the magazine, Valéry’s “Les Deux vertus d’un livre,” took the book as its subject, which testifies to Arts et métiers graphiques’ special emphasis on the medium. Wlassikoff points out that there was a clear hierarchy of genres in the magazine’s articles. It was topped by the book and bottomed by urban signage. Between these two, diverse fields of periodicals, posters, photography, wood engraving, and etching were ranked.59 The book was thus the most important area of “arts et métiers graphiques” consisting of the kernel of “French art” that the magazine tried to propagate internationally.

In the leading article for the magazine’s third issue “Art du livre,” the French poet and writer André Suarès declares the book to be the equivalent of “architecture,” observing the condensation of spiritual quality in it:

Basically, a book is architecture. Architecture means an edifice and an order, a residence for gods and for men, whether it is a simple house or a basilica. A church is an assembly: reading is another kind of assembly. A book is a house of thoughts.

57 Wlassikoff, “Futura, Europe and Photography,” 40.

58 Kristof van Gansen, “‘Une page est une image’: Text as Image in Arts et métiers graphiques,” Journal of European Periodical Studies 2 (no. 2, Winter 2017): 67-70.

59 Wlassikoff, “Futura, Europe and Photography,” 40.

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Everything begins with monuments and everything finishes with books. The medieval city collapses, the town disappears, and the book remains. An edifice is the architecture of matter: a beautiful book is an architecture of the mind.60

Suarés emphasizes the spirituality and even religious eternity of the book in associating it with a church, a basilica, or a “residence for gods.” Because it was given such a distinguished place among other graphic categories, the art of the book is the sanctuary both for the publishers and audience of Arts et métiers graphiques. In this respect, as the magazine attempts to represent “French” quality, the running text—the main body of the book—cannot be intruded upon by outside forces. It needed modernization to comply with the changing contemporary environment, but not by foreign influence, let alone Germany’s.

For the Aesthetics of Typography and the Art of Books

The embrace of books and its analogy to architecture provide an important reference to understanding the magazine’s relationship with contemporary avant-garde both in Germany and France. Architecture was given a renewed consideration as the Gesamtkunstwerk, or

“total work of the arts,” in the program of the Bauhaus. The Bau, or building, was to unite and integrate all the disciplines of fine and applied arts. Lyonel Feininger’s Cathedral of the

Future (fig. 1-14), reproduced on the cover of the school’s manifesto in 1919, represents the spiritual reference and expectation of architecture as the ideal form for the arts’ unification.

When the school consolidated its modernist stance after moving to Dessau in 1925, architecture became a model that could truly embody the merits of functionalism and modern

60 André Suarès, “Art du livre,” Arts et métiers graphiques 3 (January 1928): 135. “Au fond, le livre est de l'architecture. Qui dit architecture, veut dire un édifice et un ordre, une demeure pour les dieux et pour l'homme, que ce soit une simple maison ou une basilique. L'église est une assemblée: la lecture en est une autre. Le livre est la maison de la pensée. Tout commence au monument et tout finit par le livre. La cité s'écroule, la ville disparaît et le livre demeure. Les édifices sont l'architecture de la matière: le beau livre est une architecture de l'esprit.”

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engineering, the principal driving force behind every kind of artistic productions in the age of machine and industry. Like a work of architecture, a book involves all the different practices of the graphic arts such as typography, binding, page layout, and printing, constituting a

Gesamtkunstwerk on paper. Therefore, the analogy of the book to architecture is reasonable.

However, authors in Arts et métiers graphiques understood the idea of architecture in an utterly different way than the avant-gardes.

In France, Le Corbusier elaborated the principle of modern architecture as a “machine for living in” (machine à habiter) based on his optimistic and utopian outlook on mechanization, industrialization, and engineering in his Vers une architecture (1923). Le

Corbusier thus shared the positive outlook on technology with the German avant-gardes. This idea and phrase for the celebration of machine directly influenced Valéry, who described a book as a “machine for reading” (machine à lire)” in his essay, “Les Deux vertus d’un livre.”61 Valéry was sensitive to architecture and highly appreciated Le Corbusier’s book projects, including Vers une architecture and L'Art déoratif d'aujourd'hui (1925) before he wrote this keynote essay of Arts et métiers graphiques. His appreciation of Le Corbusier led to his appropriation of the architect’s famous concept.62 However, an analysis of Valéry’s thesis clarifies that his interest in the “machine” and its application to the book medium significantly differed from Corbu’s ambition for architecture.

Valéry argues that a book offers two different visual interests. On the one hand, the text is seen for la lecture, or reading. Readers first see a letter, and then, almost simultaneously, connect it to others, forming a word, sentence, paragraph, page, and, finally, a

61 Paul Valéry, “Les Deux vertus d'un livre,” Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 7.

62 Jean-Louis Cohen, “Introduction,” in Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007), 40.

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book. In so doing, they make sense of—or read—a chain of letters. Valéry defines this function in the following way:

This successive and linear mode requires CLEAR VISION [la vision nette], and the preservation of clear vision—an essential condition for producing the elementary actions of the brain that respond to the stimulation of writing by virtual or real sounds, by meanings. The legibility of a text is the ability of this text to be appropriate for clear vision.63

By “clear vision,” Valéry means a way of perception not obstructed by visual and formal aspects of the printed letters. The act of reading alphabets occurs when one sees them not as forms, but as phonetic signs. Therefore, letters and their optical designs do not rise to the surface when reading occurs.

On the other hand, he points out that a printed page and the letters that compose it can also be appreciated for their visual merit.

A page is an image. It gives a total impression, presents a unit or a system of units and of strata, of blacks and whites, a blot of more or less successful appearance and intensity. This second manner of seeing, no longer successive and linear and progressive like reading, but immediate and simultaneous, connects typography to architecture, the same way that reading could have recently evoked melodious music and all the arts that involve time.64

Given these two different ways of receiving text, Valéry insists that a printed page should be treated both as a material to read and as an object. However, because of the brain’s function, these two modes of seeing cannot work together at once. He states, “these two ways of looking are completely independent of each other. The seen text and the read text are entirely

63 Valéry, “Les Deux vertus d'un livre,” 4. “Ce mode successif et linéaire exige la VISION NETTE, et la conservation de la vision nette, —condition essentielle de la production des actes élémentaires du cerveau qui répondent aux excitations de l'écriture par des sons virtuels ou réels, par des significations. LA LISIBILITÉ D'UN TEXTE EST LA QUALITÉ DE CE TEXTE D'ÊTRE APPROPRIÉ A LA VISION NETTE.”

64 Ibid. “Une page est une image. Elle donne une impression totale, présente un bloc ou un système de blocs et de strates, de noirs et de blancs, une tache de figure et d'intensité plus ou moins heureuse. Cette deuxième manière de voir, non plus successive et linéaire et progressive comme la lecture, mais immédiate et simultanée, permet de rapprocher la typographie de l'architecture, comme la lecture aurait pu tout à l'heure faire songer à la musique mélodique et à tous les arts qui épousent le temps.”

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distinct things since the attention paid to one excludes attention paid to the other.”65 He insists that the art of printing reconciles these two “virtues” of a book by facilitating reading and perfecting its visual presentation at the same time. The phrase “machine for reading” then comes as a conclusion:

In summary, a beautiful book is above all a perfect MACHINE FOR READING, whose conditions are definable accurately enough by the laws and methods of physiological optics; and it is at the same time an art object, a thing, but which has its own personality, which bears the marks of a particular thought, which suggests the noble intention of a fortunate and voluntary organization.66

This passage, despite its appropriation of Le Corbusier’s dictum, proposes Valéry's aesthetic and traditionalist attitude on the book medium. Le Corbusier coined another important concept in Vers une architecture, "architecture or revolution," clearly expecting architecture to become a means of dynamic social change.67 Functionalism and engineering consisting of the “machine for living in” were essential elements for the reorganization of society and living in the post-World War I reconstruction. By contrast, when Valéry describes the beautiful book as an "art object" with the manifestation of “personality,” he shows his conventional understanding of artworks as beautiful objects created as the artist’s self- expression. Valéry’s true interest lies less on the ideological aspects of “machine for living in” than on the artistic and formal qualities inherent in machines such as regularity, harmonized composition, and balanced structure.

65 Ibid. “Ces deux modes de regard sont choses toutes indépendant l'un de l'autre. Le texte VU, le texte LU sont choses toutes distinctes puisque l'attention donnée à l'une exclut l'attention donnée à l'autre.”

66 Ibid., 7. “En résumé, un beau livre est sur toute chose une parfaite MACHINE A LIRE, dont les conditions sont définissables assez exactement par les lois et les méthodes de l'optique physiologique; et il est en même temps un objet d'art, une chose, mais qui a sa personnalité , qui porte les marques d'une pensée particulière, qui suggère la noble intention d'une ordonnance heureuse et volontaire.”

67 Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture, 291.

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Sharing the same perspective with Valéry, Vox also describes that “the page layout is the physics of the book (its chemistry comprises the quality of paper, selection of letters, processes of reproduction). It depends, like in architecture, only on the quantity, measurement, proportions and volumes, and done by the operation of the mind.”68 This completely aesthetic and spiritual attitude toward printed media embraced by Arts et métiers graphiques led to the installation of a regular column, “L'œil du bibliophile” in 1928 (AMG 3) (fig. 1-15).

Following Valéry’s thesis, this column examines the material presentation and visual merits of books, including typesetting, printing layout, cover design, and illustration, leaving the literary content aside. This column thus embodied the idea for the book as an art object.

This emphasis on the formal and aesthetic quality of the book should be considered in relationship to the magazine’s ambition to raise graphic art in general to the rank of fine art.

As Van Gansen elucidates, the editors of Arts et métiers graphiques aspired to raise graphic and applied arts, such as typography and bookmaking, to the same rank as the fine arts.69 In the first issue of the magazine, for instance, the French writer Jean Luc tries to define catalogues of commercial products as a legitimate fine art pieces. Advocating catalogue’s visual beauty granted by the carefully conceived layout of letters and images as well as other graphic elements including binding and printing, he insists that these printed matters should be considered as serious art works.70 Georges Blaizot more clearly states that the book and typography should be ranked as the “major” art rather than the “minor” art. He complains that

68 Maximilien Vox, “Justification,” Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 40. “La mise en pages est la physique du livre (sa chimie comprendrait la qualité du papier, le choix du caractère, les procédés de reproduction). Elle n’agit, comme d’architecture, que sur des quantités, sur des mesures, des proportions et des volumes, et par des opérations de l’esprit. ”

69 Van Gansen, “‘Une page est une image,’” 142.

70 Jean Luc, “Le Catalogue d'art,” Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 49-54.

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art historians and art critics have ignored book art and confined it to a "minor" art because only a limited number of people could correctly appreciate and evaluate the book’s artistic merits. Insisting that “No other art can represent the diverse nuances and the prejudices of a period in a more precise, profound, and synthesizing ways than that of books,”71 Blaizot aspires to position the book as an equivalent, or even better, means of artistic expression than any other medium.

The advent of the avant-garde raised awareness about graphic practices in general.

This growing interest merged with Peignot’s and Arts et métiers graphiques’ passion and ambition to promote typography, printing, and bookmaking as legitimate forms of artistic creation. Whereas the avant-garde embraced machines’ functionalism and standardizing potentials for the art’s social causes, Arts et métiers graphiques concentrated on adopting machine aesthetics as a formal criterion for the promotion of modern graphic art.

From Communication to Visual Aesthetics

The aestheticism and selected reception of avant-garde influence in Arts et métiers graphiques play out most evidently in its involvement with the newly emerging practice, publicité, or publicity design. Generally speaking, the word “publicity” designates a means to making things known, or making them “public.” Although publicity most typically serves for the advertisement of consumer products to convince and persuade potential purchasers, its aim is not limited to commercial purposes but can also be social, cultural, and political. This field developed dramatically in the interwar period and became the quintessential form of

71 Georges Blaizot, “L'Histoire de l'art et l'histoire du livre,” Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 661. “Aucun art mieux que celui du livre ne représente d’une façon précise, plus profond, plus synthétique, les différentes nuances et les partis pris d’une époque.”

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modern graphic art. In his 1927 essay “Publicité=Poésie,” Blaise Cendrars famously praised publicity as “the flower of contemporary life.”72 This practice transformed people’s everyday visual experiences, and as such, was embraced by avant-garde artists as a revolutionary form of art, like typography. The development of publicity was the primary background for the establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot. Examining its evolution in France will clarify the principle of studio’s operation.

Publicité as a New Form of Art

The French word publicité (publicity) came to be commonly used in the interwar period, replacing the more conventional réclame (advertisement). Writers and critics in this period clearly distinguished these two expressions. Réclame was the simple presentation of objects to be advertised along with descriptive text. It had only pedagogic and informational functions and did not leave much room for creative ideas to manifest themselves. By contrast, publicité was treated as an artistic practice that was more visually integrated and based on its creator’s overall concept and design. Pierre Mac Orlan described commercial publicity conceived by such designers, artists, and photographers as Brodovitch, Man Ray, and

Berenice Abbott as “the poetry of high commerce.”73 He also regarded publicity as a quintessential form of new art in the modern era. In short, the purely functional réclame was replaced by the more engaging and creative publicité in the 1920s.

This emergence of publicity occurred primarily as a result of the growth of capitalist consumer society and a visually oriented culture after the First World War. In 1926, in a text

72 Blaise Cendrars, “Publicité=Poésie,” in Aujourd'hui, ed. Claude Leroy (Paris: Denoël, 2005), 117-8.

73 Pierre Mac Orlan, “Graphisme,” Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 649.

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published in L'Art vivant, the art critic Louis Chéronnet described the background for publicity’s development. He pointed out that merchants and industrialists had come to realize traditional and straightforward advertisements were no longer effective enough in attracting people’s attention. Clients and customers started to judge companies by their publicity based on its uniqueness, novelty, or elegance. He thus warned that the trademarks of companies and other signage should be redesigned in a more visually attractive way.

Chéronnet also observed that publicity had started to permeate both public space and the private sphere, taking diverse forms and formats. Newspapers and journals were once powerful means that directly affected people’s way of life and thought. Publicity expanded these informational and pedagogic capacities by covering street walls with huge “panels” (fig.

1-16) that could catch people’s attention, even in the fast-paced modern social environment. It also almost completely transformed the everyday landscape. Chéronnet described the omnipresence of such “panels”:

It [the panels] is a newspaper of all the inventions, a wide-open catalogue of all the new products, a screen of the magic lantern on which all the landscapes in France pass. . . . And the man of our century walks on the street in the same way he flips through the newspaper. At the end of the day, he knows everything about the activities in his city.74

Besides these “panels,” Chéronnet listed many different kinds of printed matter such as etiquettes, leaflets, letterheads, catalogues, address books, calendars, fans, and brochures.

Publicity can also be moveable objects, from sandwich board-men to advertising cars.

Now it surrounds us, envelops us, it is intimately mingled with our steps, with our activity, with our relaxation, and its “atmospheric pressure” is so necessary for us that we do not feel it anymore. It moves with us in the public vehicles and around us

74 Louis Chéronnet, “La publicité moderne: la gloire du panneau,” L'Art vivant (August 1926): 618. “Il est la gazette de toutes les inventions, le catalogue grand ouvert de toutes les nouveautés, l'écran de lanterne magique où passent tous les paysages de France. . . . Et l'homme de notre siècle parcourt la rue ainsi qu'un journal. A la fin de sa journée, il sait tout sur l'activité de sa ville.”

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through men with sandwich boards. It grows on the field among wheat, poppies, and telegraph poles. In the theater, it is in the program in which it often replaces the names of the piece's authors. In the music hall, one sees it even on the stage on which it transforms the fin diseur [skilled reciter], despite his clothing, into a street singer. It slips into the newspaper between news of an assassination and an official telegram. Readers discover it suddenly, in the form of a bookmark, while turning the pages of a novel they are reading. Also, catalogues bring it to us as the torture of Tantalus at home.75

In recognizing the ubiquity of publicity, Chéronnet even claimed that “the composition of air had changed” and that “it is necessary to add publicity to the oxygen and nitrogen that we breathe.”76 The poet and critic Léon-Paul Fargue also alluded to the omnipresence of publicity by projecting an imaginary cityscape deprived of it: “Deprived of advertisements, photography, and reviews, objects had lost their citizenship. They were no longer hideous, attractive, pleasant to touch, or worthy for the eye.”77 Here, Fargue contended that without publicity, the city would become dry and barren, which conversely points to its predominance in the everyday urban landscape in the interwar period.

Critics in this period positively evaluated this democratic and social dimension of publicity as a new and revolutionary form of art that marked the end of the “art for the art’s sake” of the previous century. Moreover, its composite nature was seen as a solution for the isolation of each artistic genre. To cite Chéronnet again, publicity “comprises manifestation of

75 Ibid. “Maintenant elle nous entoure, nous enveloppe, elle est intimement mêlée à nos pas, à notre activité, à nos délaissements, et sa pression ‘atmosphérique’ nous est si nécessaire que nous ne la sentons plus. Elle se meut avec nous dans les véhicules publics et autour de nous par le moyen des hommes-sandwich. Elle pousse dans les champs parmi les blés, les coquelicots et les poteaux télégraphiques. Elle est au théâtre dans le programme où elle remplace souvent les noms des auteurs. Au music-hall, on la voit même sur la scène où elle transforme le fin diseur, malgré son habit, en chanteur des rues. Elle se glisse dans le journal entre un assassinat et un télégramme officiel. Le lecteur la découvre tout à coup, sous la forme d'un signet, au détour d'une page dans le roman qu'il lit. Et les catalogues nous l'apportent comme un supplice de Tantale à domicile.”

76 Louis Chéronnet, “La Publicité, art du XXe siècle,” L'Art vivant (March 1927): 92. “La composition de l'air est changée. A l'oxygène et à l'azote que nous respirions il faut ajouter la publicité.”

77 Léon-Paul Fargue, “Salut à la publicité,” Arts et métiers graphiques 45 (February 1935): 6-8. “Privés de réclame, de photographie, de compte-rendu, les objets avaient perdu leur droit de cité. Ils n'étaient plus ni affreux, ni charmants, ni agréables au toucher, ni dignes de l'œil.”

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all the arts. . . . All the arts offered it a tribute which it put to wonderful use. Its graphic and visual system is perfectly complete. Painting gave it posters, drawing offered company trademarks and letterheads, sculpture gave mannequins and automata. Architecture and its daughter, mise en scene, suggested window displays.”78

Publicity constituted a “temple of art” indebted to every field of artistic practice. It was thus another form of Gesamtkunstwerk in the modern era, which can be placed vis-à-vis bookmaking. If the book represented a traditional total work of art in printing, publicity was its up-to-date edition, in which new forms and ideas could easily inhabit. The application of

Futura/Europe in the latter and resistance in the former should be understood as a result of each medium’s openness to change. While the bookmaking industry was hesitant and precautious toward avant-garde influence, publicity was fully open to it.

Avant-garde artists in Germany recognized the merit of publicity and promoted it as a quintessentially modern means of informative and pedagogic communication. And it is here photography came into play. For maximizing the communicative capacity of visual information, publicity in this period often took a composite representation of expressive typography and photography. Moholy-Nagy provided a theoretical reflection on the rise of this kind of modern publicity by coining the neologism “typophoto” in his seminal book,

Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925).

What is typophoto? Typography is communication composed in type. Photography is the visual presentation of what can be optically apprehended. Typophoto is the visually most exact rendering of communication. Every period has its own optical focus. Our age: that of the film, the electric sign, simultaneity of sensory perceptible events. It has given us a new, progressively developing creative basis for typography,

78 Chéronnet, “La Publicité, art du XXe siècle,” 192. “Tous les arts lui ont offert un tribut dont elle a su merveilleusement user. Son système graphique et plastique est parfaitement achevé. La peinture lui a donnée l'affiche, le dessin les marques de fabrique et les en-têtes, la sculpture les mannequins et les automates. L'architecture et sa fille, la mise en scène, lui ont suggéré l'étalage.”

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too. Gutenberg’s typography, which has endured almost to our own day, moves exclusively in the linear dimension. The intervention of the photographic process has extended it to a new dimensionality, recognized today as total. The preliminary work in this field was done by the illustrated papers, posters and by display printing.79

Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques spearheaded the advancement of such types of publicity in France by establishing Studio Deberny et Peignot as well as introducing avant- garde “typophoto” works on the magazine’s pages. Indeed, the magazine was a response to the growth of publicity works, and its promotion was one of its principal missions, as the company’s statute specified in 1926. Accordingly, the magazine actively dealt with this topic in an independent category of article, “Publicity,” from its first year of publication. The launch of a regular column, “Actualité graphique” (Graphic News, commenced in AMG 4,

March 1928) that aimed to reproduce outstanding examples of posters, bills, and advertising brochures produced both inside and outside of France, most manifestly represented this interest (fig. 1-17).

However, as in the case of the book and architecture, this column provides a formalist take on these new mass media. The editorial board communicated their principle for organizing “Actualité graphique” as follows: “We intend to organize this column as a permanent exhibition of advertising. The most beautiful catalogues, letterheads, invitation cards, menus, and posters will be reproduced here without any written comments, just as paintings accepted by jury are presented in a salon.”80 By turning the pages of the magazine into an exhibition venue, this column functioned as the catalogue of the latest examples in

79 Translation from László Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, trans. Janet Seligman (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 1967), 39.

80 “Actualité Graphique,” Arts et métiers graphiques 4 (April 1928): 264. “Nous avons le dessein d'organiser sous cette rubrique comme une exposition permanente de la publicité. Les plus beaux catalogues, les en-tête de lettres, les cartes d'invitations, les menus, les affiches y seront reproduits sans commentaire comme sont présentées dans un salon de peinture les toiles qu'a retenues le jury.”

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publicity design. Most of the avant-garde productions in Germany, the Soviet Union, and

Eastern and Central Europe that I have mentioned were featured in this column. However, contrary to the communicative and pedagogic tenets that supported these works, “Actualité graphique” aimed at their aesthetic appreciation in comparing them to “paintings accepted by jury” and “presented in a salon.” Juxtapositions of these publicity works on the same page also enforced and enhanced the formalist reception by enabling and leading the reader to compare and contrast adjacent images. This aesthetic attitude dominated and led the company’s effort and productions of new typographic and publicity designs.

Visualization of Typography: Bifur and Divertissements typographiques

The New Typography movement in Germany emphasized and embraced the visual value of letters in response to a new social environment that was becoming more and more reliant on vision. Describing the visual aspect of typography, Mohony-Nagy states, “The typographical materials themselves contain strongly optical tangibilities through which they can render the content of communication in a directly visible—not only in an indirectly intellectual—fashion.”81 As in the case of “Actualité graphique,” however, the innovation of typography in Deberny et Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques put emphasis on the visual aesthetics of letters and expressions by each artist/designer more than its communicative capacity.

It was Bifur (fig. 1-18), designed by A. M. Cassandre and released by Deberny et

Peignot in 1929, that first embodied this growing awareness of modern visual and artistic typography. Cassandre was one of the leading modern poster artists who represented the age

81 Translation from Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film, 40.

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of Art Déco along with the other three affichistes of his generation, Paul Colin, Jean Carlu, and Charles Loupot. Following the lead of Lionetto Cappiello, who initiated a new age of poster design by abandoning the ornamentation favored in the Belle Époque, Cassandre’s generation composed their works with a bold combination of expressive typography and simple forms influenced by Cubism, Cubo-Futurism, and abstract art. The famous poster for the Parisian evening journal L'Intransigeant in 1925 (fig. 1-19) was composed of the simple and geometric profile of a man and other figures. This work shows the direct influence of

Fernand Léger's paintings of the 1920s. The insertion of angular capital letters in a sans-serif font strongly impresses the viewer with the abbreviation of the journal’s name, “L'INTRAN.”

This clear-cut and sophisticated design catches the viewer’s attention immediately by its visual impact. Producing similarly eye-catching poster designs, Cassandre led the changes in publicity design and the transformation of the contemporary urban landscape.

Peignot met this leading poster designer after the Paris Decorative Art Exposition in

1925. Following his father’s path, Peignot was working on reviving and refining the traditional typefaces.82 At first, he fine-tuned (through the new cutting and casting of) an Art

Nouveau alphabet, Naudin, followed by Astrée, Grasset, and their stock of Garamond. After the merger of Deberny and Peignot, he engaged in the refinement and modernization of the

Sphinx typeface that he had unearthed from the vast stocks of the foundry (fig. 1-20). Peignot finished this process in 1924 and exhibited Sphinx at the 1925 exposition. Unlike the ornamental, curvilinear, and organic Art Nouveau typefaces, Sphinx has a solid and stable design. Its thick vertical lines enhance the alphabet’s visual immediacy, while its triangular serif decreases the impression of bulkiness and balances the design’s solidity and

82 Charles Peignot, “Georges Peignot: Créateur français de typographie moderne,” Caractère Noël 13 (1961): n.p.

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sophistication. Cassandre was strongly intrigued by this bold and expressive new alphabet, which he found “revolutionary,” and approached Peignot.83

Although Peignot poured his energy into refining traditional faces, he was more intrigued by creating new designs. In an interview in 1961, he recalled, “I could not be satisfied with copying past models! I found myself driven to express the spirit of my era in my craft as I felt it. It is a question of environment, of breathing, I was of my time and I experienced it in my craft.”84 The encounter with Cassandre gave Peignot momentum for venturing into the creation of new alphabets, just as the collaboration with Georges Auriol enabled his father to launch new designs.Cassandre thus became the quasi-official type designer of Deberny et Peignot and created innovative designs for Bifur, Acier (1931), and

Peignot (1937). This duo would determine the course of typography made in interwar France.

As Denoyelle describes, Peignot was not really a creator, but he was intuitively good at obtaining collaborators with creative talent.85 Among others, Vox and Cassandre were irreplaceable partners. Vox once described the trio of Peignot, Cassandre, and himself as the

“three persons of the majestic Trinity.”86 If Vox was the source of inspiration and the driving force behind Peignot’s enterprises, Cassandre gave form to Peignot’s ambition to create new typographic designs that met contemporary needs and demands.

83 Fonds Peignot, 5 Charles, Biographie de Charles PEIGNOT, 6, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris.

84 “Deberny et Peignot: La Belle époque de la typographie,” 53. “Je ne pouvais pas me contenter de copier l'ancien! Je me suis trouvé entraîné à traduire l'esprit de mon époque dans mon métier, tel que je le sentais. C'est une question d'environnement, de respiration, j'étais de mon temps et je le vivais dans mon métier.”

85 Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques,” 133.

86 Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” 56. “. . . les trois personnes de la Trinité auguste incaranée par Peignot, Cassandre, et Vox!”

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Cassandre’s first alphabet for Deberny et Peignot, Bifur (fig. 1-18), was utterly unconventional and intended to break with the accepted norms of typographic tradition. He reduced each letter to its most characteristic and distinguishable lines. These primary lines are rendered as a painted block, while the remaining space is filled with shading composed of fine vertical or horizontal lines. Bifur existed only in the upper case and was meant to catch people’s attention at a single glance by its visual impact and immediacy. Its design verged on drawing, which prevented it from being categorized in the typographic tradition. In 1924, the

French typographer Francis Thibaudeau classified existing typefaces into four groups according to the shape of their serif: L'Antique (sans-serif), L'Egyptienne (square serif),

L'Elzévir (triangular serif) and Le Didot (line serif).87 Bifur was unclassifiable in this taxonomy and marked the emergence of a new principle in typeface design by Deberny et

Peignot.

This alphabet is based more on its visual value as an image than its legibility as letters.

Cassandre explains his design principle:

Bifur was designed like a vacuum cleaner or a combustion engine, to fulfill a determined function—not to decorate. It is this utilitarian merit that can make it part of our current life. . . . We tried simply to give the word back the power of IMAGE that it originally had. Reduced to a schematic form, its purest expression, it can, we believe, become more ‘photogenic’ for our tired retinas. . . . Bifur, an advertising typeface, was designed to print a word, a single word, a word on display.88

87 Francis Thibaudeau, “Classification des caractères d'imprimerie déterminée d'après leur empattement,” Arts et métiers graphiques 13 (September 1929): 790-781.

88 A. M. Cassandre, “Le Bifur, caractère de publicité,” Arts et métiers graphiques 9 (January 1929): 578. “Bifur a été conçu comme un balai éléctrique ou un moteur à explosion, pour remplir une fonction déterminée—non pour orner. C'est cette vertu d'utilité qui peut le faire participer à notre actualité. . . . Nous avons tenté simplement de rendre au mot sa puissance d'IMAGE qu'il avait primitivement. Réduit à une forme schématique, sa plus simple expression, il peut, croyons-nous, devenir plus 'photogénique' pour nos rétines fatiguées. . . . Bifur, caractère de publicité, a été dessiné pour imprimer un mot, un mot tout seul, un mot affiche.”

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His association of the letter with a “vacuum cleaner” and a “combustion engine” emphasizes its utilitarian nature and functionality as well as an intention to fit typography to the contemporary machine aesthetics. More importantly, he clearly states that Bifur “displays” as an “image.” It testifies to the idea that visualization was closely connected to the notion of mechanization and industrialization.

After its official release in 1929, Bifur was employed for display type, including publicity, the headlines or title logs of magazine articles, and letterheads. Although Bifur met with a weak response from professionals and critics in general, it was the first attempt by

Deberny et Peignot to modify and tune alphabet designs to a modern, visual society. After

Bifur, Deberny et Peignot launched a series of equally visual typefaces, including Acier

(1931) by Cassandre (fig. 1-21) and Film (1933) by Marcel Jacno (fig. 1-22), both putting much emphasis on their uniqueness as image and mostly based on the drawings by each designer/artist. These distinct alphabets contrast with Futura, which was originally intended for the facilitation of communication with its standardized shape. These new alphabets released by Deberny et Peignot were, of course, means of communication by nature of letters, but were concerned more about each artist’s creativity.

The emphasis on the visuality of letter design also entailed the proposition of new ways to use existing typefaces and typographic ornamentations in more creative and artistic ways. In 1928, a year before Bifur’s release, Vox edited a series of unique publications,

Divertissements typographiques (1928-1933). In these volumes, he proposed ideas and provided samples of the combination of letters for display in various professional contexts (fig.

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1-23).89 After the merger of Deberny and Peignot, Peignot was planning a publication that benefited from the richness of the foundry’s stocks accumulated by generations of directors of two foundries. He entrusted the embodiment of this project with Vox, who realized it as

Divertissements typographiques.

The first installment of Divertissements typographiques in 1928 was a collection of cartons that contained folders with booklets made of loose pages and other pieces of papers.

These sheets included proposals and compositional ideas of all kinds of job printing under three categories: Les travaux de ville (restaurant menus, letterhead designs, envelopes, postcards, name cards, anniversary greeting cards, invitations, programs, receipts, and invoices); Publicité (etiquette, boxes, catalogue, prospectus, posters, street signs); and

L’édition (books, magazines, and journals). Vox expressed the aim of publication in the following way:

The collection we offer you with these first pages, as you will notice at first glance, aims to develop the infinite resources of pure typography in compositions that are sometimes simple and classic, sometimes amusing and bold, but all of them are easily produced by a good typesetter. . . . in a time when typography is recognized as one of the principal decorative arts, when there is in all countries an intense and fruitful effort toward a technique that is both free and strict, adapted to the needs of our century, our Divertissements Typographiques will be, we hope, a new stimulant for the creative spirit of French typographers. There remain so many brand new effects to obtain, so many old practices to revive. And advertising, by opening up a new field for our art, gives it the obligation to reinvent itself constantly.90

89 Vox also had his own small business, “Service Typographique,” in 1929 based at 24 avenue d'Italie in the thirteenth arrondissement that undertook designs and typesetting, which served as the prototype of Divertissements typographiques. Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” 65.

90 Maximilien Vox, ed., Divertissements typographiques 1 (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1928): n.p. “Le recueil dont nous vous offrons les premiers cartons, vous vous en rendez compte au premier coup d'œil, vise à développer les infinies ressources de la pure typographie dans des compositions tantôt sobres et classiques, tantôt amusantes et hardies, mais toute d'une exécution aisément réalisable par un bon compositeur. . . . mais dans un temps où la typographie est reconnue pour l'un des principaux arts décoratifs, où dans tous les pays se manifeste un effort intense et fructueux vers une technique à la fois libre et stricte, adaptée aux besoins de notre siècle, nos Divertissements Typographiques seront, nous l'espérons, un nouveau stimulant pour l'esprit créateur des typographes français. Il reste tant d'effets inédits à obtenir, tant de pratiques anciennes à faire renaître. Et la publicités, en ouvrant à notre art un champ nouveau, lui crée l'obligation de se renouveler sans cesse.”

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These collections presented various examples of typographic compositions for each occasion to demonstrate different visual effects given by creative combinations of each typeface.91 For instance, in L'édition, Vox proposed variations on a book cover composition for a single title (fig. 1-24), each of which offered utterly different impression about the title and the book’s content. These specimens educated the reader the necessity for the intelligent use of typography and understanding of letter’s visual aspects. Not limited to the arrangement of alphabets, Divertissemens typographiques also offered ideas to exploit the optical quality of traditional typographical vignettes and ornamentations; as an example, Vox composes a human figure by wittily combining traditional vignettes of waving lines, trait de plume (fig. 1-

25). This example offered a creative recycling of conventional ornamentation in typography, thus a divertissement.

Bifur and Divertissements typographiques represented two ways for visualizing the typography proposed by Deberny et Peignot. While the former was an attempt to highlight the formal property of alphabets, the latter reconsidered letters’ visual effects in their total arrangement, displacement, and combination. These two projects were both conceived under the strong influence of the German New Typography movement, yet at the same time proposed design made in France.

The Establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot: From “Typophoto” to “Typo/Photo”

In “Graphisme,” published in issue 11 of Arts et métiers graphiques (May 1929), Mac

Orlan examined how publicity was invigorated in combination with the modern development

91 To promote it as widely as possible, it was distributed for free to the clients of Deberny et Peignot. If desired, the foundry also sold additional copies for only ten francs.

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of graphic practices in this period. He discussed three mediums with names with the French suffix “-graphie,”— photographie, cinématographie, and phonographie—to consider the changing media environment. Mac Orlan states, “For the last few years, a few months maybe, all these photographic, typographic, and phonographic tools have redeemed advertising by creating an art that is also an art of social expression of our time: the art of superior publicity.”92 It is this reformation of the graphic practice that constituted the background for the establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot in 1929 as a new enterprise that responded to the growing demand for “typophoto” images. At the same time, its principle of providing ready-to-use printing plates was prefigured by the principle of Divertissements typographiques, which supplied ready-to-use ideas of typographic composition. Therefore,

Studio Deberny et Peignot was a synthetic project that represented not only the contemporary evolution of graphic design, but also a series of typographic innovations in Deberny et

Peignot typefoundry in the 1920s.

The idea of combining the two facilities of typography and photography in one location made this enterprise a new business model. Conventionally, to make a printing plate containing both text and images, one had to go back and forth between a number of specialists, including typesetters, photographers, draftsmen, engravers, artists, and printers. As a rule, each expert’s shop played only a single function. For instance, photography studios and agencies such as Wide World and Rapho provided and distributed their stock of photographs upon request, but they did not undertake the processing of printing plates. It was necessary to visit a printer’s shop to obtain this service. Studio Deberny et Peignot economized this time-

92 Mac Orlan, “Graphisme,” 649. “C'est depuis quelques années, quelques mois peut-être, que tout cet outillage photographique, typographique, phonographique qui réhabilite la publicité en créant un art, qui est également un art d'expression sociale de notre temps: l'art de la publicité supérieure.”

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consuming process. It also enabled the production of aesthetically unified designs because every production process could take place at one location by the same group of artists and artisans.

The first announcement of the studio published in Arts et métiers graphiques in

November 1929 succinctly summarized the service’s merit (fig. 1-26). Declaring “Bring your idea—we will provide you a plate” in its head line, its text, likely written by Peignot, continues:

You have often dreamed of seeing your advertising ideas realized, ready to be printed, without needing to be concerned with the various technical phases of their production. You have wished to have available an organization that is capable of bringing together all services: photography, typography, photogravure, electroplating. You also have wished for a provider that has all these four functions, instead of four different providers. In order to respond to your legitimate wish and to simplify your work, Foundry Deberny et Peignot has created an organization which you can think of as your own from now on. It offers you: a photo studio managed by Tabard; an experienced composition department service with abundant stocks of an unlimited variety of the latest typefaces; a photogravure and electroplating department that enables us to deliver your plates with photo and text, ready for printing.93

Recommended by Vogel, Peignot appointed Tabard as the first director of the studio.

Tabard had been best known for his experimental photographs, especially for his careful and masterly use of solarization, and his association with Surrealism. However, he also had ample

93 Arts et métiers graphiques 14 (November 1929): n.p. “Apportez-nous votre idée—Nous livrerons un cliché. Vous avez souvent rêvé de voir vos idées publicitaires réalisées, prêtes à être tirées, sans avoir à vous occuper des différentes étapes techniques de leurs fabrications./Vous avez souhaité avoir sous la main une organisation capable de réunir tous les services : la photographie la typographie la photogravure la galvanoplastie d’avoir un seul fournisseur, là où vous en aviez quatre./C’est parce que vous en aviez besoin, que les Fonderies Deberny et Peignot ont créé pour répondre à ce vœu légitime et pour vous simplifier votre travail cette organisation que vous pouvez dorénavant considérer comme vôtre: elle comprend:/Un studio photographique sous la direction de Tabard./Un service de composition expérimenté, riche d’une inépuisable variété de caractères les plus nouveaux./Un service de photogravure et de galvanoplastie permettant de vous livrer votre photo et votre texte, prêts à être tiré.” This advertisement is composed only of text and typographical elements without any photographic image. It embodies the combination of traditional/modern and French/German elements as well as displaying the company’s new specimens. The paragraphs are arranged in the form of cul-de-lampe, a traditional typographical vignette of inverted triangular shape, which leads the reader’s eyes towards the studio’s name “STUDIO DEBERNY ET PEIGNOT” at the bottom of the page. The text is printed in Europe, while the first letter of each paragraph are in Bifur. The advertisement of the studio soon integrated photographic images.

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professional experience in studio, press, and publicity photography because he worked in the commercial Studio Barlach in Baltimore in the United States after he departed from France in

1918. Upon his return to Paris in 1928, he also worked for Vogel’s magazines, including VU and Le Jardin des modes. Although Tabard left Studio Deberny et Peignot in 1932 because he gradually felt pressured and frustrated by its increasing commercial demands, the period during his directorship was the studio's most prolific moment.

Studio Deberny et Peignot provided publicity designs for such famous companies as

Hotchkiss, Dunlop, Patou, and Ford (fig. 1-27). The studio’s products were modeled on the works of avant-garde artists in Germany, the Soviet Union, and Eastern and Central Europe with their use of simple and bold composition and forms. Tabard and the studio staff also actively employed novel experimental techniques of photography such as photomontage, solarization, multiple exposure, extreme close-up, and boldly angled views. These techniques were embraced by the program of the avant-garde, especially in the New Vision led by

Moholy-Nagy. Because publicity works demanded, first and foremost, eye-catching effects, it was the ideal place for these surprising techniques of photography to flourish.

An advertisement of Studio Deberny et Peignot in 1930 smartly made use of negative printing (fig. 1-28). This publicity features a photograph of a camera lens that Tabard actually used in the studio. This self-referential illustration not only conveys that the studio employs photography as its principle means for image-making, but also demonstrates what innovative photographic images it can offer in its products. In addition to the visual impact of the experimental technique, this same advertisement features expressive arrangements of typefaces owned by Deberny et Peignot. The letters “PHOTOGRAPHIE” and “SERVICE

TYPO/PHOTO DEBERNY PEIGNOT” are printed in Europe that was advertised as “the

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indispensable complement for publicity photography”94 Europe’s mechanical and streamlined outline complements the sense of modernity represented by the photographic image. On the upper part of the same advertisement, various alphabets of the typefoundry, including Bifur,

Sphinx, Europe, and other more traditional ones, compose “TYPOGRAPHIE,” which refers to the richness and novelty of their collection. The waving layout of these letters contrasts with the straight arrangement of “PHOTOGRAPHIE,” alluding to the flexibility and visual expressiveness of typography and mechanical precision of photography, respectively. By combining the latest photographic and typographic ideas, this publicity testifies that Studio

Deberny et Peignot absorbed and embodied the new tenets of graphic design.

However, the works by Studio Deberny et Peignot propose yet another difference from the avant-garde publicity design principle of “typophoto.” In most cases, the designs by

Deberny et Peignot place typography and photography with a certain distance in retaining their integrity as an autonomous unit (fig. 1-1). They are usually separated by white printing margins and rarely fuse with each other. Such layout contrasts with the works by the German avant-garde in which the two elements are often superimposed or montaged to create a new composite image. This separation of letters and images is also reflected in the notation of the studio’s service. Advertisements of Studio Deberny et Peignot almost always place the two words “TYPO” and “PHOTO” separately, or insert a slash mark between them (fig. 1-28).

While the avant-garde “typophoto” consisted in the integration of text and images, the works by Deberny et Peignot were more about the juxtaposition of two independent elements. The studio’s works thus may better be called “typo-photo” or “typo/photo” rather than “typophoto.”

This method of juxtaposition enables the aesthetic contemplation of both elements while

94 Maxilimien Vox, ed., Divertissments Typographiques 3 (Paris: Deberny et Peignot, 1930), n.p. “Complément indispensable de la photo publicitaire.”

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appreciating the overall harmonized composition as an “architecture” at the same time. This principle of aestheticism and the mutually reliant, yet independent relationship between photography and typography will overshadow and predict the development of photography seen in the projects led by Peignot in the decade to come.

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Chapter 2

Reading Photography, Looking at Typography:

The Interaction of Text and Image in Photographie, 1930

On March 1, 1930, Arts et métiers graphiques dedicated its sixteenth issue entirely to photography (fig. I-3). Given a simple title, Photographie, this special number was realized as a deluxe publication that reproduced 117 pictures submitted by forty-eight contemporary photographers and photo agencies in France, Germany, and the United States. For the first time in France, it showcased works by leading and emerging modernist photographers in these three countries, including László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Max Burchartz, Albert

Renger-Patzsch, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, Florence Henri, Charles Sheeler, and

Edward Steichen. The volume exhibited the gamut of the medium’s novel visual repertoire by featuring photographs with new subjects and experimental techniques. Pictures taken from a bird’s-eye view (fig. 2-1) or a worm’s-eye view (fig. 2-2)—called plongée (“plunged” view) and contre-plongée, respectively, in the French language—and daring close-ups (fig. 2-3) provided unconventional compositions. Man Ray’s camera-less photogram (fig. 2-4), which he called a rayographe, embodied the etymology of “photography,” as “the drawing by light.”

René Zuber’s double exposure (fig. 2-5) and Maurice Tabard’s negative print (fig. 2-6) represented the possibilities of the camera’s mechanical capacity and introduced new perceptions. Modern subjects included metal structures as the Eiffel Tower (fig. 2-7) and Pont transbordeur in Marseille, the Bugatti racing car (fig. 2-8), and the gigantic ocean liner Île de

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France (fig. 2-9), all of which were embraced as symbols of mechanized and industrialized society by a number of contemporary artists, such as Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant.

This album immediately caused a sensation, and it was enthusiastically received as the first French publication to summarize the medium’s latest developments. The French photographer Daniel Masclet (whose work was also included in the volume) later recalled that

Photographie’s impact was as shocking as “a bomb” that “demolished, in a few blows, the old art photography that had been dying since 1914.”1 By “dying” art photography, Masclet meant the stagnant situation surrounding the medium in France. The art photography of

Pictorialism was still the dominant current in the French photographic scene, even in the late

1920s. The country’s largest organization for the promotion of this mechanical art, the Société française de photographie (hereafter referred to as SFP), continued to champion such French

Pictorialists as Robert Demachy (fig. 2-10) and Constant Puyo, who had been working since the late nineteenth century. These art photographers kept creating pictures that imitated the blurry atmospheric effects of Impressionist painting.2

Contrary to the outdated situation in France, photography underwent dramatic changes both in terms of theory and practice in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Eastern and Central

Europe in the early 1920s. First exploited as an ideological device for political engagement by the Soviet Constructivists, most famously El Lissitzky and Alexandre Rodchenko, photography’s modern formal language was consolidated in Germany by photographers

1 Lucien Lorelle, “Entretien avec Daniel Masclet,” La Photographe 750 (August 24, 1951): 287. This volume “fit l’effet d’une bombe dans les milieux artistiques de ce temps-là. Il démolit en quelques rounds la vieille photographie d’art, moribonde depuis 1914.”

2 The SFP changed its name to the Société française de photographie et cinématographie, or SFPC, in 1929. To avoid confusion, this dissertation will use the acronym SFP consistently regardless of the date.

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associated with the New Vision and the New Objectivity.3 These new currents of photography, together with Surrealism born in Paris, were grouped under a single rubric called La Nouvelle photographie (the New Photography) by contemporary French critiques. For instance, a review of Photographie published in the Bulletin de la Societé française de photographie et cinématographie (the official periodical of the SFP), employed this expression to address the diverse styles and methods of Tabard, Sougez, Steichen, Georges Hoyningen-Huene, and

Martin Munkacsi.4

The New Photography sporadically but steadily permeated the everyday visual landscape of France in the 1920s. As I have shown in the previous chapter, photography merged with and developed in tandem with publicity in the mid-to late 1920s. The establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot was a response to this change, and it mediated the spread of the new photographic idioms in French society. As a result, by the time

Photographie was published in March 1930, the visual repertoire of the New Photography had already been recognized and incorporated by graphic artists, designers, and photographers, including those who surrounded Charles Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques. Both of

3 To better understand the differences between photography in the Soviet Union and Germany, especially the loss of a political valence of Constructivism in the German New Vision, see Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “The Armed Vision Disarmed: Radical Formalism from Weapon to Style,” in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), 82-107. Soviet photography did not have a true presence in interwar France. Politically speaking, France was a bulwark against the Soviet revolution. Thus, except for the organs directly connected to the Communist party, such as the illustrated weekly Regards, the New Photography in France mostly concerned Germany and Eastern and Central Europe. Photographie 1930 did not contain any photographs taken by canonical Soviet artists such as El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko.

4 Anonymous, “The British Journal of Photography (9 octobre 1931),” Bulletin de la Société française de photographie et cinématographie 12 (December 1931): 271.

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Peignot’s closest collaborators, A. M. Cassandre (fig. 2-11) and Maximilien Vox, used photographs in their posters and publicity designs in the late 1920s.5

However, while the mass media familiarized the French people with the visual idioms of the New Photography, photographic images in publicity were usually consumed as one of the graphic components constituting the overall design. In publicity, photography served a certain practical purpose, either informative or commercial, and was generally presented in combination with other graphic components such as letters and drawings. In contrast,

Photographie directly spotlighted and presented photographic images independently. In doing so, the volume showcased photographs by contemporary practitioners as autonomous photographic works to be appreciated in its own right. In this respect, Photographie was the first French publication to commemorate the advent of the New Photography specifically as a photographic movement.

Its first print run—likely 3,000 copies, judging from the circulation of the regular issues of Arts et métiers graphique—sold out within a year. After receiving this initial popularity and success, Photographie was published annually throughout the 1930s, until the last issue, Photographie 1940 (fig. 2-12).6 As the only French annual photography publication

5 The dissemination of the New Photography was also mediated by the migration of photographers. For a chronological unfolding and detailed list of names and nationality of Parisian photographers and artists involved in the New Photography, see Clément Chéroux, “Du Cosmopolitisme en photograqphie: Portrait de Paris en échangeur culturel,” in Voici Paris: Modernité photographique, 1920-1950, ed. Quentin Bajac (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2012), 30-41. The importance of print media for the dissemination of photography has been discussed in Carol Armstrong, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843-1875 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), and Douglas Crimp, “The Museum’s Old / Library’s New Subject,” in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), 3-14.

6 Confusingly, this last volume Photographie 1940 was published in 1939. The disjuncture between the title year and the actual publishing year occurred because the issue in 1933 was titled “Photographie 1933-34.” Consequently, the next year’s album became Photographie 1935, even though it was released in 1934. The annual also reappeared once in 1947, but did not continue after that.

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that continued throughout that decade, Photographie offers important documentation that not only reflected but also catalyzed changes in taste in the interwar French photographic scene.

This chapter will focus on Photographie 1930 and examine its conception, content, and reception. This volume has been widely recognized as one of the most essential and iconic publications on photography in interwar France. The volume’s contribution to the development of the French photographic scene is irrefutable, as it functioned as the primary conduit for the transmission of international currents of modernist photography, especially the

German New Vision. However, as I have discussed in chapter 1, the avant-garde’s radical tenets were received half-heartedly with a certain hesitance and reservation in France and Arts et métiers graphiques. Therefore, Photographie should not be simply considered as a vehicle for the transmission and introduction of the radical photographic tendencies but as Arts et métiers graphiques’ response to the innovations in contemporary photography.

This chapter will also consider the volume not merely as a collection of photographic images, but also as an independent graphic art piece that embodied the innovation of typography, printing, page layout, and bookmaking. Previous literature has correctly located this volume within the contemporary publishing world. The French photo historian Françoise

Denoyelle rightly acknowledges that this publication compensated for the lack of an overview of the New Photography in the French publishing world.7 The French photo collector and historian Christian Bouqueret also locates this volume in the context of contemporary publishing by clarifying its impact on the proliferation of luxurious photobooks in 1930s

7 Françoise Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques: Histoire d’images d’une revue de caractère,” La Recherche photographique 3 (Decembre 1987): 16.

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France.8 However, despite their interest in locating Photographie within the French publishing context, these studies have not sufficiently examined the annual’s physical presentation as an object and its consumption as a bound volume. As Paul Valéry’s essay

“Les Deux vertus d’un livre” demonstrates, Arts et métiers graphiques treated the book as an art object.9 Therefore, this publication merits a detailed analysis as an independent work of art in addition to its photographic content.

In this chapter and the following ones, I will use the word “album” to designate

Photographie and similar kinds of publications composed mainly of photographic images. In the English language, an album designates an empty binder meant to hold photographs that someone puts inside it. In the French language, however, this expression also means a large book that contains an amount of illustrations. In fact, Peignot and contemporary critics in interwar France usually used the word album for Photographie.

There are several terms that can be used to describe publications with photographic images, including “photobook” and “portfolio.” These words are often used without any precise definition or distinction. However, customarily speaking, they have their own specific connotations. “Photobook” sounds generic, as this expression was recently used by Martin

Parr and Patrizia di Bello to encompass various types of publications from The Pencil of

Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot to volumes made in the twenty-first century.10 However, in a narrower sense, “photobook” is often used to describe a book of photographs conceived

8 Christian Bouqueret, Paris: Les Livres de photographie, des années 1920 aux années 1950 (Paris: Gründ, 2012), 116-21.

9 Paul Valéry, “Les Deux vertus d'un livre,” Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 7.

10 Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: A History, vol. 1 (London: Phaidon, 2004), and Patrizia di Bello, ed., Photobook: From Talbot to Ruscha and Beyond (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).

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as an artwork by conceptual artists since the 1960s. A “portfolio” implies a collection of works by a single artist or photographer conceived as a presentation piece. Thus, by implication, this expression is at odds with collective volume as Photographie. In addition, a portfolio is not limited to the field of visual art, but is also seen in other artistic genres, such as literature and music. Considering the distinctive connotations of each expression, the word

“album” should be the most historically precise term for Photographie and other similar volumes made in interwar France.

The Conception of Photographie

Domestic Situation

Despite its impact on contemporary photographers and its importance in the history of photography, Photographie came to life as a result of a casual decision made by Peignot in

1929. In this period, he was looking for a solution to compensate for the financial difficulties of Arts et métiers graphiques. After the first issue was released in September 1927, Arts et métiers graphiques quickly gained a reputation as a unique publication that provided a platform for accessing the latest trends in typography, bookmaking, printing, and other graphic practices. As discussed in chapter 1, it was also a beautiful object with the utmost care given to its material presentation, thanks to the editors’ uncompromising selection of paper, ink, layout, and printing techniques. However, its over-refinement made it a costly enterprise.

Its high brow and modernist content also limited the range of its readership. In order to overcome this situation and promote the magazine further, Peignot came up with an idea—

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“Why not an album of photography?”—at some point in early 1929.11 This proposal may sound spontaneous but it was not, because Peignot’s words emerged out of the growing interest in photography that he had been fostering in the late 1920s. He employed a number of photographic illustrations in Arts et métiers graphiques and promoted publicity with photographic images, which led to the establishment of Studio Deberny et Peignot later the same year.

Peignot also keenly recognized the increasing demand for photography in the French publishing industry. Deberny et Peignot was almost a required place to visit for Parisian publishers and design firms because of its ample stock of typefaces, indispensable for bookmaking and printing. Therefore, Peignot was in a position to easily obtain the latest news and currents concerning printable media and the increasing use of photography in it. For example, the Surrealists were quick to recognize and actively exploit photography in their novels and magazines already in the 1920s. As early as 1922, May Ray published Champs délicieux, an album of his twelve rayographs. This volume provided the first collection of photographic experimentation in France. In 1927, André Breton employed photographs by

Jacques-André Boiffard in his novel Nadja. Breton used them less as the mere illustration of his text than as an equally subversive content. The group’s magazine, La Revolution surréaliste (1924-29) reproduced photographs and photomontages by its associates, such as

Man Ray and Max Ernst. Georges Bataille’s magazine Documents (1929-30) also amply

11 Anne de Modenard and Sophie Rochard, “Charles Peignot (1897-1983): Editeur de photographies dans les années 1930,” Georges: Photographes & photographies 1 (1993): 3. Peignot reportedly said, “Pourquoi pas un album de photographies?” This article describes how Peignot conceived Photographie. The account by de Mondenard and Rochard is one of the most reliable sources on the publication, as the authors based their text on two unpublished interviews of Peignot in 1982 by Jean-Philippe Charbonnier and Christian Vaissié. De Mondenard also contacted Peignot’s daughter, Sophie Peignot, for information. Anne de Mondenard to Sophie Peignot, March 1, 1993, Box 5, Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris. In this letter, de Mondenard also asks Peignot for help arranging an interview with two children of Lucien Vogel.

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employed photographs especially in its unique column “Dictionnaire,” in which such well- known images as Big Toe by Boiffard and La Villette Abattoir by Eli Lotar were featured for overturning the acquired notion of beauty.12 While the operation of Surrealism was more or less closed to its artistic circle and the group’s publications, outside influences, namely

Constructivism, the New Vision, and the New Objectivity, figured significantly in the field of mass print media and mediated the spread of new photographic images in society.

The year 1928 marked a decisive moment for the profusion of photography in the

French printing world. Three seminal publications, namely, Jazz, Métal, and VU, were all released in this year, heralding the rise of the New Photography in France. Jazz (fig. 2-13) was a monthly art magazine initiated by the progressive writer, publisher, and critic Carlo

Rim and the journalist, reporter, and adventurer Titaÿna (the pseudonym of Elisabeth Sauvy).

Rim, one of the leading advocates of modernist photography, was well aware of the

“reinvention” of photographic means in the interwar period. In his often-cited text published in L'Art vivant, another important magazine for the reception and promotion of the New

Photography in France, Rim observed that “photography was invented twice. First by

Nicéphore Niépce and [Louis Jacques Mandé] Daguerre about a century ago, and then by our generation.”13 Reflecting Rim’s interest in the New Photograph, Jazz was a pioneering French periodical that regularly featured works by progressive photographers associated with the diverse movements of Surrealism, New Vision, and New Objectivity, including Krull, Man

12 For Surrealist photography, see, for instance, Rosalind Krauss. Rosalind Krauss, “Corpus Delicti,” October 33 (Summer 1985): 31-72; Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 (Winter 1981): 3–34; Krauss, ed., L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985); Dawn Ades, ed., Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006); and Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, eds. La Subversion des images: Surréalisme, photographie, film (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2009).

13 Carlo Rim, “Les Jeux de l'amour et du hazard,” L'Art vivant (November 1930): 870. “La photographie a été inventée deux fois. D'abord par Nicéphore Niépce et par Daguerre, il y a environ un siècle, ensuite par nous.”

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Ray, Berenice Abbott, Lotar, and Tabard. Even though the magazine lasted only a year, it provided an essential channel for accessing modern photography.

Métal (fig. 2-14) is a collection of sixty-four works by Krull edited by the art book publisher Librairie des Arts Décoratifs. As the title of this volume indicates, Métal showcased photographs of metal structures, modern factories, and machines. Krull actively photographed such subjects in Germany, the Netherlands, and France, earning her the nickname “the

Valkyrie of iron.” She often captured these modern subjects from extreme angles viewed from above or below and with a daring close-up technique. She learned photography in Germany amidst the rise of the New Vision, and her works directly reflected her training. The subjects of the pictures in this album, as well as Krull’s technique, professional training, and the characteristic traits of her work, all symbolically represented the advent of the New Vision in

France.14

Last but not least, the illustrated weekly VU (1928-1939) (fig. 2-15), directed by

Lucien Vogel—the mentor of Peignot and one of the principle editorial members of Arts et métiers graphiques—played a critical role in disseminating modernist photography to every corner of French society.15 If the audience for Jazz and Métal was rather closed to artistic and intellectual circles, VU was the true mediator of modern photography to a broader mass

14 Bouqueret, Paris, 17-21. The preface of Métal was written by Florent Fels, the chief editor of L'Art vivant. For the full text translation of this preface, see Florent Fels, “Preface to Métal by Germaine Krull,” in Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writing, 1913-1940, ed. Christopher Philips (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art/Aperture, 1989), 13-15. L'Art vivant was another indispensable art magazine that regularly dealt with new trends of photography. This magazine contributed to the establishment of critical discourses on photography in interwar France.

15 The following three volumes provide encompassing accounts on VU: Michel Frizot and Cédric de Veigy, VU: The Story of A Magazine (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), Danielle Leenaerts, Petite histoire du magazine Vu (1928-1940): Entre photographie d’information et photographie d’art (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2010), and Sophie Kurkdjian, Lucien Vogel et Michel de Brunhoff, parcours croisées de deux éditeurs de presse illustrée au XXe siècle (Bayonne: Institut Universitaire Varenne, 2014).

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audience. The magazine started in March 1928, six months after Arts et métiers graphiques began. Modeled on such German precursors as Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (BIZ) and

Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ), this general-interest and mass-circulating weekly was the first French periodical that used photography as its main content (fig. 2-16).16 Vogel employed representative modernist photographers who had migrated to France from Germany and Eastern Europe. Among others, the works by three étrangers—the German, Krull, the

Hungarian, Kertész, and the Romanian, Lotar—filled the pages of the magazine from its first issue. Sold for two francs per issue at local newsstands, VU spread across all over France and brought the New Photography to a mass audience.

Rim, Krull, and Vogel were among the organizers of the Salon de l'escalier held in the same year at the staircase of the Comédie des Champs-Elysées. This exhibition initiated by

Krull was directed by Vogel, Rim, and other outstanding Parisian editors and publishers including Florent Fels, Jean Prévost, and Georges Charensol. Though it lasted only two weeks, the Salon de l'escalier displayed, for the first time in France, works by newly recognized

Parisian photographers including Man Ray, Krull, Kertész, Abbott, and Albin Guillot, as well as Nadar and Eugène Atget. The concept for Photographie emerged out of this backdrop surrounding the dissemination of modernist photography and the ever-increasing interest in the medium in the French publishing world.

It was Vogel who was behind Peignot’s new enterprise. When Peignot came up with the idea for a photo-album, he did not know many photographers. Vogel thus intervened by

16 Vogel and VU later became more and more leftist and anti-fascist. Because of this overt political orientation, Vogel was fired in 1936. Françoise Denoyelle, La Lumière de Paris: Les usages de la photographie, 1919-1939 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997), 117.

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introducing him to photographers connected to his network,17 which was not limited to those who were associated with VU but also included such fashion photographers as Hoyningen-

Huene. Hoyninge-Huene was working for Condé Nast publications, which later appointed

Vogel as the director of the French edition of Vogue magazine. Vogel’s affiliation with the

American company also allowed Peignot to include in the project works by Steichen, who was employed by the same publishing house. Indeed, Steichen’s works in Photographie are all copyrighted with Condé Nast. Well connected to the worlds of publishing both inside and outside France, and experienced in dealing with photography in print media, Vogel played a vital role in the realization of Photographie.18

Besides Vogel, the French photographer Sougez was another irreplaceable contributor to Photographie. Peignot, who met Sougez through Vogel, appointed the photographer as the official collaborator on the project.19 If Vogel was the most powerful and radical editor in interwar France, Sougez was arguably the most influential, albeit not the most radical, French photographer of the period. Seriously engaged in the elaboration of the art and métier of photography, he was seen as mentor figure to most of the emerging French photographers.20

He also wrote numerous essays and articles on the medium’s history, theory, technique, and aesthetics. His photographs and texts were ubiquitous in contemporary French publications.

Sougez was also fully involved in the publishing industry, working as the director of the

17 Kurkdjian, Lucien Vogel et Michel de Brunhoff, 183-184.

18 VU announced the release of Photographie. VU 111 (April 30, 1930): 402.

19 Sougez’s name is on the page for Photographie’s table of contents as “Cent-trente photographes réunies avec collaboration de Sougez.” Arts et métiers graphiques 16 (March 1930): n.p.

20 For Sougez, see Juliette Lavie, “Emmanuel Sougez (1889-1972): Un Photographe en prise avec son temps” (PhD diss., Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 2013), and Marie-Loup Sougez and Sophie Rochard, eds., Emmanuel Sougez: L'éminence grise (Paris: Editions Créaphis, 1993).

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photography department of the time-honored French illustrated periodical L’Illustration

(1843-1944) since 1926. He was thus the best person to rely on for the realization of this album project. Assisted by Vogel and Sougez, Peignot and the editorial members of Arts et métiers graphiques succeeded to secure the cooperation of a number of prominent photographers.

The arrangement of images in Photographie 1930 spotlights the work of these principal contributors to the album’s realization. While most of the pages contain photographs surrounded by white margins, four images are reproduced in full bleed format. Because of the enlargement of the images and the small number of its applications in the volume, this arrangement should be considered as a privileged printing treatment. One of the full bleed pages is dedicated to Moholy-Nagy (fig. 2-17), the protagonist of the New Vision. He became known in France as the founding figure for the development of the New Photography in general, especially after his article on the medium’s modern evolution was translated in

Cahiers d’art in 1929.21 Accordingly, Photographie pays homage to Moholy-Nagy by allocating this special layout to his work. His full bleed image takes a contre-plongée view that was typically associated with the New Vision and reflected the mobility of handheld cameras. Aside from the Hungarian artist, however, this privileged treatment in printing is also reserved for three of the volume’s immediate French contributors: Tabard, who had served as the director of Studio Deberny et Peignot since its establishment in late 1929 (fig. 2-

18), Sougez (fig. 2-9), and Vogel, in the form of an anonymous picture copyrighted with his

VU (fig. 2-19).

21 László Moholy-Nagy, “Photographie: Ce qu’elle était et ce qu’elle devra être,” Cahiers d’art 1 (1929): 28-33.

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Similar to Moholy-Nagy’s work, these images exemplified typical modern photographic subjects and techniques. Sougez’s picture capturing an ocean liner, tower cranes, and the industrial landscape is executed with a masterful camera handling and balancing of the composition typical of this master photographer. Though this photograph is not manipulated, its deep focus and precise rendering of the different textures of mud, sand, and machines and its delicate atmospheric effects makes it appear almost like a photomontage.

The image from VU shows a man with a parachute in the sky. This was a popular motif seen in the mass media and used to represent the possibilities of new aeronautic technologies as well as the development of mobile handheld cameras. The impressive fold-out feature by

Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova in the Soviet illustrated magazine USSR in Construction provides a representative example of similar vision (fig. 2-20)

Last but not least, Tabard’s close-up shot of a camera lens does not merely represent the photographic instrument but also symbolizes the content of this volume as a whole. As it appears immediately after the front matter, this eye-catching image is the very first photograph that the reader of Photographie encounters, Tabard photographed a camera lens that he actually used in Studio Deberny et Peigniot with careful and precise focus on its mechanical details. Interwar photographers frequently put their own cameras and lenses in the picture frame, as handy motifs, a symbol of machine aesthetics embodied by the instrument’s formal precision, and the photographers’ self-affirmation and identification with the ideas.

Self-portrait with Cigarette by Krull (fig. 2-21), for instance, captures her Ikarette camera held in front of her face. As the camera’s lens and finder replace the eyes of the photographer, this portrait affirms her reliance on the camera’s mechanical eye. Tabard’s photograph

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certainly belongs to such a contemporary paradigm. This is a self-referential photograph, and thus, the best image to start the album dedicated to the medium.

In Response to German Models

In addition to the domestic environment, Photographie was also a response to the profusion of photo albums in Germany. The French album’s content and format were determined by preceding German publications. If one of the missions of Arts et métiers graphiques was the promotion and propagation of French art, Photographie was conceived to serve this purpose by emulating advanced creations made outside France. An editorial note

(highly likely to have been written by Peignot) in issue 17 of Arts et métiers graphiques, published two months after the release of Photographie, describes the album’s success and confirms the motive for the project:

The success achieved by this important deluxe publication, which constitutes issue 16 of Arts et métiers graphiques, was most brilliant both in France and in foreign countries. We receive enthusiastic compliments every day on the beauty of its presentation and the interest of its numerous documents. People tell us this is an unprecedented collection that brings together the most diverse and characteristic tendencies of photography artist from Daguerre to our time. . . . We ask our subscribers to tell others about this volume so that our magazine will be disseminated further and contribute, with the prestige that it has acquired, to developing and supporting French graphic production. It will also prove that we, in France, can rival the best production of foreign countries.22

22 “Photographie,” Arts et métiers graphiques 17 (May 1930): 196. “Le succès par cet important album de luxe qui constitue le n° 16 d’Arts et Métiers Graphiques, a été des plus vifs aussi bien en France qu’à l’Etranger. Nous recevons tous les jours des éloges enthousiastes sur la beauté de sa présentation et l’intérêt de ses nombreux documents. C’est un recueil sans précédent, nous dit-on, réunissant les tendances les plus diverses et les plus caractéristiques des artistes de la photographie depuis Daguerre jusqu’à nos jours. . . . Nous leur demandons de le dire autour d’eux afin que notre revue se répande plus encore et contribue, avec le prestige qu’elle a su acquérir, à développer et à défendre la production graphique française, et à prouver que l’on peut en France rivaliser avec ce que l’on fait de mieux à l’étranger.”

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Among these “foreign” countries, Peignot certainly had Germany in mind. As I have described in the previous chapter, Peignot’s effort to innovate French graphic art was in dialogue with the advancement of German avant-garde practices. Contemporary reviews of

Photographie in France also saw this volume in relation to superior German productions. For instance, Christian Zervos, the director of Cahiers d'art, expressed that it was a “true joy to receive the installment of Arts et métiers graphiques dedicated to photography,” and remarked that “[n]o one has ever built such a monument of this art, even in Germany.”23

As the photography historian Danielle Leenaerts observes, photography albums primarily mediated the introduction of modern photographic tendencies to French audiences.24

Printed media could quickly and easily cross national borders due to its portability and transportability. By the time Photographie was released in 1930, such seminal German publications as Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei, Fotografie, Film (1925) and Renger-Patzsch’s Die

Welt ist schön (1929) had already been circulating in France. These volumes were available at specialized bookstores that handled foreign publications. One of such relaying points in Paris, the Librairie Fischbacher, was located at 33 rue du Seine in the sixth arrondissement, close to the office of Arts et métiers graphiques at 3 rue Séguier. The magazine regularly printed the bookstore’s advertisements, suggesting a close connection between the two outposts.25

Peignot and the magazine’s editorial members could easily obtain German books and albums.

23 Christian Zervos, Cahiers d’art 2 (1930): 109. Zervos writes about “la joie sincère que [lui] a procurée la livraison d’Arts et métiers graphiques consacrée à la photographie.” “On n’a jamais élevé pareil monument à cet art, pas même en Allemagne.”

24 Leenaerts, Petite histoire du magazine Vu, 86.

25 Advertisement for Librairie Fischbacher, Arts et métiers graphiques 5 (May 1928): n.p.

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In 1929, Arts et métiers graphiques reproduced excerpts from the two canonical publications of the New Objectivity in full-page format: Karl Blossfeldt’s Urformen der

Kunst (fig. 2-22) and Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schön (fig. 2-23). Urformen der Kunst was the photo album that first impressed the advent of the New Objectivity both in Germany and France. Blossfeldt’s extreme close-ups of plant specimens in this volume proved the camera’s mechanical and technological capacity to reveal the hidden beauty that the human eye could not see. The excerpt in Arts et métiers graphiques shows a bloom of thistle. Its precise focus and delicate color contrasts should convince the magazine’s reader not only of the photograph’s technological possibility but also of its aesthetic potential. This volume by

Blossfeldt, published in 1928 in Berlin by Ernst Wasmuth Verlag, was translated and published as a French edition, La Plante, by Librairie des Arts décoratif (the same publisher that edited Krull’s Métal).

Renger-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schön (1929) is another quintessential publication of the

New Objectivity. Like Blossfeldt, Renger-Patzsch also explored the camera’s penetrating gaze with his masterful handling of photographic equipment and the close-up technique. He captured broader subjects than Blossfeldt, including plants, animals, landscapes, portraits, factories, and machines. The excerpt from Renger-Patzsch’s album reproduced in Arts et métiers graphique represents clasped hands in close-up. This image is the last photograph in

Die Welt ist schön. Though Renger-Patzsch’s album was not translated into French, Peignot and the magazine’s editorial staff must have known it well as the album was available at

Librarie Fischbacher. Furthermore, one of the magazine’s close collaborators, Zuber, should have informed Peignot and the editors with the volume, as he reportedly encountered the book

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when he was living in Leipzig.26 Reproduced one after the other in Arts et métiers graphiques, these two works by Blossfeldt and Renger-Patzsch demonstrated the advancement of German photography to the magazine’s audience. It is clear that Peignot had already known such advanced German volumes before he conceived Photographie.

More importantly, two other German albums, Das deutsche Lichtbild (1927-1938) (fig.

2-24) and Foto-Auge (1929) (fig. 2-25), have often been mentioned as immediate models of

Photographie because these three volumes share the same printing format and collective nature. Images in these three albums are printed on both sides of a page and thus are juxtaposed in pairs on double-page spreads, which enables the reader to compare adjacent photographs. Though this printing format appears to be commonplace from today’s point of view, it was innovative in the late 1920s. Many of the canonical photography publications released in the 1920s, including Urformen der Kunst and Die Welt ist schön, were single- sided. Das deutsche Lichtbild and Foto-Auge were two pioneering examples of the double- sided album in Germany. In France, no previous album before Photographie used the same arrangement. Therefore, it is safe to say that the French volume’s format was modeled on these German precursors. These two German publications were often compared to the French album not only by contemporary French audience but also by critics residing outside the country (Though, unlike Urformen der Kunst and Die Welt ist schön, these two were not featured in Photographie.).27 For instance, in 1931, the American photographer Walker Evans

26 Zuber recalls that “[i]n passing the quartier where many bookstores are, one day, my attention was drawn by a book that had just been published and was not like the others, for its cover, both recto and verso, was purely photographic.” (“En passant dans le quartier des libraires, mon attention fut attirée un jour par un livre qui venait de paraître et qui n’était pas comme les autres parce que sa couverture, au recto comme au verso, était purement photographique.”) Quoted in Christian Bouqueret, René Zuber: La Nouvelle objectivité (Paris: Marval, 2003), 7.

27 For contemporary French critiques comparing Photographie to Das deutsche Lichtbild and Foto-Auge, see, for instance, an anonymous article published in Semaine de Paris, April 18, 1930. This article and reviews on Photographie 1930 are in the scrapbook, “Album de coupures de presse,” Box 11, Fonds Peignot.

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provided a most succinct and direct comparison in observing that Photographie is “the French equivalent of Photo-Eye [Foto-Auge].”28

Das deutsche Lichtbild was published by Bruno & Schultz Verlag in Berlin as the accompanying catalog to the annual exhibition of an organization with the same name. It not only shares the same pace of publication with Photographie but also has a similar materiality as a bound volume; both annuals included approximately 120 to 130 images each year printed on thick, matte paper. Peignot certainly knew the existence of this German album, as it was circulated widely in France. Das deutsche Lichtbild designated its official retail agents in each country of distribution. In France, Editions Paul Montel, a prestigious publishing house specializing in photography, undertook this role. Paul Montel published a number of magazines on photography in the interwar period, including La Revue française de photographie et cinématographie (1920-40), Le Photographe: Revue mensuelle des professions photo-cinéma (1910-1981), and Photo-Illustration: Revue internationale de documentation photographique (1934-39). The first periodical functioned as a supplement to

Bulletin de la société française de photographie, the official journal of the SFP. Therefore, this publishing house was located at the center of the conservative French photographic community surrounding the SFP. The company also officially redistributed foreign photo albums, including Das deutsche Lichtbild, the British Photogram of the Year, and the Italian

Luci ed ombre.29 Given the imposing presence and influence of this publisher in the French

28 Walker Evans, “Reappearance of Photography,” Hound and Horn: A Harvard Miscellany 5, no. 1 (October- December 1931): 128. In this essay, Evans compares and contrasts albums released between 1928 and 1930 in France, Germany, and the United States.

29 In a sense, Peignot’s Photographie emulated the dominance of Paul Montel in the field of photography publishing. The two publishers actually had a conflict on the occasion of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, the photography exhibition organized by Peignot in 1936. For details of this quarrel, see chapter 4.

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photographic world, Das deutsche Lichtbild was one of the best-known foreign albums in

France in the late 1920s.

Though it did not have an official distributor in France, as in the case of Das deutsche

Lichtbild, Foto-Auge was also intended to circulate worldwide, as its preface was written in

German, French, and English. Published on the occasion of the canonical Film und Foto exhibition held in Stuttgart in 1929 (fig. 2-26), this album, edited by the German art historian

Franz Roh and the typographer Jan Tschichold, has been widely recognized as a seminal volume representing the tenets of the New Vision. Initiated by the Deutscher Werkbund, this international exhibition was the first commemorative event of the New Photography. It showcased the latest photographic tendencies in Europe and the United States selected by such prominent figures as Moholy-Nagy, Edward Weston, Piet Zwart, and El Lissitzky.30 This exhibition had three accompanying publications: Foto-Auge, Werner Gräff’s Es Kommt der neue Fotograf, and Hans Richter’s Filmgegner von Heute—Filmfreunde von Morgen. While the latter two volumes were not necessarily direct representations of the exhibition, Foto-Auge was, and it reflected the exhibition by reproducing the works that were hung in the show.

Given his connection to the German avant-garde, Peignot could not miss the event and its related publications. It is also likely that the volume was brought to him by Vox, who exhibited ten works of his publicity and typographic designs in the French section of Film und

Foto organized by Zervos.

30 There are a number of reviews and studies on Film und Foto. See, for instance, Beaumont Newhall, “Photo Eye of the 1920s: The Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition of 1929,” in Germany: The New Photography, 1927-33, ed. David Mellor (London: Art Council of Great Britain, 1978), 77-86; and Francesco Zanot, “The Film und Foto Exhibition in 1929,” in Photoshow: Landmark Exhibitions that Defined the History of Photography, ed. Alessandra Mauro (London: Thames and Hudson, 2014), 128-47.

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In the use of the double-page format, Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei, Fotografie, Film

(1925) may also be considered as a model for Photographie. However, I would make a clear distinction between Moholy-Nagy’s book and the other three publications in question based on the use of textual elements. Malerei, Fotografie, Film contains explanatory texts, most of which contain a few sentences meant to facilitate and instruct on how to see the reproduced images (fig. 2-27). By contrast, the captions in the other three albums provide only the name of the photographers in combination with either the work’s title (in Foto-Auge) or the place where the photographer resided (in Das deutsche Lichtbild and Photographie). The use of sparse textual information maximizes the effect of the double-page spread juxtapositions by enabling the reader to focus exclusively on the image’s visual components, without being distracted by the written information. In this respect, these three publications offer a different editorial principle from Moholy-Nagy’s volume. Malerei, Fotografie, Film aimed to establish a pedagogic program for looking at photographs. The other three albums belonged to the period after Moholy-Nagy’s textbook-manifesto completed its mission.

In its selection of photographs and photographers, Photographie was conceived to emulate Foto-Auge, and thus also Film und Foto. I would argue Photographie intended to compensate for the weak French participation in the international exhibition. The French exhibit of Film und Foto organized by Zervos was not really “French,” as it did not include many French nationals. Zervos, himself an immigrant from Greece, selected only internationally renowned Parisian figures regardless of their nationality, such as Man Ray and

Kertész, to reflect the city’s cosmopolitan environment. As a result, photographers whose reputation was more or less limited inside France, for instance, Albin Guillot and Sougez, and young French photographers, including Parry and Boucher, who had recently started to

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practice new photographic experiments, were completely omitted. In other words, this section was less “French” than “Parisian.” As the accompanying publication to the exhibition, Foto-

Auge’s content directly reflected this limited roster represented in Film und Foto’s French exhibit.

By contrast, Photographie granted more space to French nationals. The album was composed of works by forty-eight photographers. Twenty-two of them participated in Film und Foto and were reproduced in Foto-Auge. Photographie thus added twenty-six new names, and nineteen of them (more than seventy percent of the newly added photographers) were

French nationals or Paris-based young practitioners, such as Sougez, Albin Guillot, Boucher,

Parry, André Vigneau, and Masclet. By including these underrepresented French photographers, the album attempted to internationally show, disseminate, and promote photography made in France.

This aspiration to boost France’s presence was not limited to contemporary practice; it was also accompanied by a historical ambition. Photographie reproduced a number of nineteenth-century photographs by the so-called “primitive” photographers, including Louis

Daguerre and Nadar (fig. 2-28).31 This is a unique feature of Photographie that was not seen in its German precursors. While the albums of the New Vision, including Foto-Auge, were fundamentally progressive and forward-looking, as the movement aimed at proposing and providing education on new ways of perception, Photographie demonstrated a retrospective approach in looking back to the origins of the medium. This historical interest is also

31 Waldemar George, “Photographie: Vision du monde,” Arts et métiers graphiques 16 (March 1930): 12. The French word, primitif, was often used by contemporary authors to designate those who contributed to the initial development of the medium.

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remarkable in the album’s introductory essay written by Waldemar George, “Photographie:

Vision du monde,” which traces the evolution of the medium since its inception in the 1820s.

The inclusion of historical photographs, especially by French practitioners, should be interpreted as another attempt to emphasize France’s contribution to the development of the medium. The history of photography became an essential topic in the interwar period that corresponded to the centenary of its invention. This had particular significance for France, as it was two Frenchmen, Nicéphore Niépce and Daguerre, who “officially” invented photography. Significantly, Photographie completely overlooked Henry Fox Talbot and other

British innovators, while it amply reproduced the works by French practitioners including

Daguerre, Nadar, and Atget. By appearing in the first pages of the album to illustrate George's essay, these French pictures function as the prequel to the volume’s main content. The sequential and chronological connection from past to present proposes the idea that photography’s contemporary flourish was grounded in the French founding fathers.32 At the centennial of the medium’s invention, France, despite being its official inventor, was in the unfortunate position of no longer being seen as a leader, but rather as the follower of the more advanced German and Eastern European countries. In a compensatory move, Photographie aimed to regain France’s prestige by sanctioning French creations that spanned both historical and contemporary practices. Photographie thus can be defined as an attempt to create a

French alternative of Foto-Auge in the selection of its content.

32 This French-centered historical narrative was further developed in the mid to late 1930s. See chapter 4.

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A Bibliophilic Volume

In addition to the national intent, Photographie also manifests an obvious focus on the aesthetic quality of reproduced images, when we compare its content to Foto-Auge’s. For instance, the German album contains a number of photomontages for publicity designs and some shocking documentary photographs, including a scene of a murder taken from a local police photo archive (fig. 2-29). Authors of the German volume understood photography as a new literacy in the modern era that should be acquired by everybody. In the introductory essay of Foto-Auge, “Mechanism and Expression: The Essence and Value of Photography,”

Roh declares that “not to be able to handle a camera will soon be looked upon as equal to illiteracy.”33 Photography’s mechanical “eye” educates the reader on how to perceive the world anew. Foto-Auge was thus conceived to represent the entire scope of the camera’s capacity by reproducing shocking and sometimes ugly images as well as aesthetic ones. As

Roh declares, this book “does not mean to say ‘the world is beautiful,’ but also: the world is exciting, cruel, and weird.”34

On the contrary, its French counterpart entirely avoided these intense, incisive, and vernacular photographs. The limited selection of Surrealist photography in the volume also makes the aesthetic orientation of Photographie clearer. As Surrealism was a Paris-based movement (but, because of its cosmopolitanism, not necessarily “French”) and actively employed printed matters, Peignot and the editorial members of Arts et métiers graphiques should know the works by Surrealists well. Peignot employed several people who were directly or indirectly associated with the group, including Philippe Soupault and Pierre Mac

33 Franz Roh, “Mechanism and Expression: The Essence and Value of Photography,” Foto-Auge (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1929): 14. Quotes from Foto-Auge are in the original English text.

34 Ibid., 16.

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Orlan as authors in his magazine and Tabard as the director of the studio. Photographie and

Arts et métiers graphiques also involved Man Ray, Lotar, Kertész, and Brassaï (though it is necessary to note that some photographers did not openly declare their affiliation with the group).

However, the company’s publications never featured typical Surrealist photographs with uncanny and subversive qualities. Some representative Surrealist photographers with such traits, Claude Cahun, Hans Bellmer, and Boiffard, never appeared on the pages of

Photographie. Even for the accepted photographers, Photographie steered away from printing their truly provocative works. For instance, Lotar’s well-known series depicting the slaughterhouse at La Villette (fig. 2-30) did not appear in Photographie, while his other works

(fig. 2-31) were given space. His photographs of butchers, slaughtered cows, and their carcass had previously been reproduced in the major periodicals including VU, L'Art vivant, and

Documents, and thus were widely recognized as Lotar’s representative works. However,

Photographie did not accept them, because the world was surely “beautiful” for this album.

By the same token, the album did not transplant the revolutionary ideology of the New Vision embodied by Foto-Auge, repeating the pattern of Deberny et Peignot’s aestheticized reception of the New Typography discussed in chapter 1. Consequently, this nature of the French album makes it close to Renger-Patzsch’s collection of aesthetic photographs in principle, despite the difference of their printing format.35

The contrasts between Foto-Auge and Photographie underscore the two volumes’ different background of production and purpose. The former was designed to reach as large a public as possible. It was conceived to be an instrument for the expansion of human vision by

35 Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques,” 12-13. I will discuss the relationship with Renger-Patzsch and the interwar French photographic scene further in chapter 3.

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offering new perceptual experiences of the camera’s mechanized vision and its wide range of application in fields not limited to art. This purpose directly affected its appearance as a publication. The other editor of the volume, Tschichold, wrote that the aim of this volume was

“to produce an unpretentious, unpompous book that should be beautiful but inexpensive.”36

His statement represents the New Vision’s ambition to propose a new collective and democratic form of art in both photography and bookmaking. This ambitious but populist statement makes a sharp contrast with Peignot’s ostentatious declaration about Photographie as a collection of “the most beautiful photographs in the world” published as a special issue of

“the most luxurious magazine in the world,” whose “sole aim was to draw the attention of an elite audience to graphic arts.”37

Photographie was in fact an expensive publication sold at seventy francs, which was twice as costly as the regular issue of the already luxurious Arts et métiers graphiques sought after by book collectors.38 This aesthetic and elitist attitude stems from the fact that the magazine belonged to the French bibliophilic culture.39 Here, it is sufficient to remember what

Pau Valéry discussed in his “Les Deux vertus d’un livre,” the leading article of Arts et métiers

36 Jan Tschichold, “Wie das Buch Foto-Auge (1929) enstand,” in Schriften 1925-1974 (Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1991), 2:423, quoted in Inka Greve Ingelmann, “Mechanics and Expression: Franz Roh and the New Vision, A Historical Sketch,” Object:Photo, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2014, accessed May 8, 2016, https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/assets/essays/GraeveIngelmann.pdf.

37 Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 17, 196. “Notre seul but a été d’amener le public d’élite à s’intéresser devantage aux arts graphiques.”

38 As early as 1929, the magazine announced that its first six volumes would be revalued at 700 francs, five times more than their original price, and the second volume had already been sold out. Its first volume alone attained a value of 450 francs in 1930 in an auction held at the Hôtel Drouot. An untitled editorial note, Arts et métiers graphiques 12 (July 1929): n.p.; “Notes et Echos,” Arts et métiers graphiques 17 (May 1930): 198.

39 Kristof van Gansen, “‘Une page est une image’: Text as Image in Arts et métiers graphiques,” Journal of European Periodical Studies 2 (no. 2, Winter 2017): 67-70, and Jean Leplant, “Années 30: La Revue arts et métiers graphiques,” Histoires de photographie: Notes sur la photographie, l’arts et les images, November 26, 2010, accessed May 8, 2016, http://www.histoiresdephotographie.fr/?p=154.

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graphiques quoted in chapter 1. Valéry emphasized that a book is an art object40, and, similarly, Photographie was a volume to be appreciated as such, a beautiful bound volume containing artistic photographs. While Foto-Auge was a means to propagate the novel perceptional modes and experiences through various kinds of photographs, Photographie was an end in itself as an art object.

Reading Photographie

If Photographie was conceived for appreciation as a bibliophilic volume, reproduced photographs are not the only accomplishments of “French art” that it attempted to promote internationally. When Peignot talked about the favorable reception of the album in Arts et métiers graphiques 17, he expressed his satisfaction with the enthusiastic acceptance not only of the “documents” (in other words, photography) it contained, but also of the beauty of its presentation. He stated, “this album surprised experts by the success of its physical production.

And they estimate that the price of seventy francs was by no means high.”41 The album, like the magazine’s regular issues, was executed with the same care for printing and design, which made it an expensive venture. Photographie thus embodied contemporary innovations of bookmaking with its publication design.

Book Design “of Our Age”

It is the album’s sophisticated cover design that first attracts the reader’s attention (fig.

I-3). The cover of Photographie features the simple but bold and sophisticated title

40 Paul Valéry, "Les Deux vertus d'un livre," Arts et métiers graphiques 1 (September 1927): 7.

41 Peignot, Arts et métiers graphiques 17, 196. “[C]et album fait l'étonnement des techniciens par la réussite de a réalisation matérielle. Et ils estiment fort peu élevé le prix de 70 francs auquel il est vendu.”

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“PHOTOGRAPHIE” in the Europe font, all in upper case. Evenly divided into two lines,

PHOTO and GRAPHIE, these letters, printed in white, appear to hover over a black background. The letters cast a gray shadow, as if they were actual, physical letter blocks placed under a strong light source. This cover design not only alludes to the volume’s contents—black and white photographs—by its monochromatic presentation, but also to the latest stock-in-trade of the Derbeny et Peignot typefoundry and its commitment to the modernization of typography.42 The technique of making a sharp, strong contrast of white and black (thus, light and shadow) was often used in publicity shots at the time, including works by Studio Deberny et Peignot. Equipped with bright lamps, the studio created a specialist position for a light technician, to which Emeric Féher was the first to be appointed. In a photograph taken inside the studio by Tabard (fig. 2-32), Féher aims a spotlight onto a tennis racquet. This striking contrast of light and dark not only emphasizes the materiality of the objects of the advertisement, but it also grants an intriguing “aura” that stimulates the viewer’s desire to purchase them. In this regard, the cover design of Photographie may also be considered as a metonymic representation of, and reference to, the studio’s professional work.

In addition to the typographic arrangement on its cover, the volume’s peculiar binding also stands out (fig. I-3). Instead of being bound by staples or thread, the pages of

Photographie are perforated and joined together with a spiraling metal wire. This binding is commonly and routinely employed today for notebooks and memo pads. It was, however, a brand new system that had just been commercialized and patented as reliure spirale (spiral

42 After Photographie 1930, Futura/Europe became associated with photography, its publication, and other activities related to the medium. Michel Wlassikoff, “Furuta, Europe and Photography,” in Photo/Graphics (Paris: Jeu de Paume, [2007]), 36-37, accessed August 28, 2018, http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/Photographisme_GB.pdf.

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binding) in 1929 by Draeger Frères, one of the leading design studios, and a loyal partner of

Deberny et Peignot. Upon its release in 1929, Draeger used it for two publications: the inaugural program of Théâtre Pigalle, illustrated with photographs by Krull (fig. 2-33), and an advertising catalog for the car company Rochet-Schneider (fig. 2-34). Arts et métiers graphiques reproduced excerpts of these booklets in the column “Actualité graphique.”43

These booklets preceded and provided models for Photographie in the application of this novel binding. Distributed among a limited audience, they were demonstration pieces and test beds for the application of this new binding system. Photographie was thus the first case in which the reliure spirale was used for a commercially circulating book volume.

As in the case of the Europe font, this reliure spirale was advertised as the binding “of our age.” An advertisement for the binding in Arts et métiers graphiques defined the material and geometric regularity of a metal spiral wire as the representation of modern machine aesthetics and functionalism: “The cover of the open book is spread on the table, the pages appear in their fullness and flat from the first page to the last, you can easily turn them by a mechanical gesture. . . . The eye, as sure of itself as the hand is calm, moves without fatigue, from the end of one line to the next: the head moves only slowly, requiring no effort to follow bent words and to look for the last letters of each line deep in the book.”44 The traditional bound book can be difficult to hold and is impossible to keep flat on a table without damaging

43 Particularly, the booklet for Théâtre Pigalle merits a study on its own because of its innovative quality. In addition to photographs by Krull, it also reproduced a handwritten manuscript by Jean Cocteau as its preface. This unique format points to innovations in photomechanical processes. For a description of this volume, see Bouqueret, Paris: Les Livres de photographie, 38-39.

44 Jean Alby, advertisement for reliure spirale, Arts et métiers graphiques 13 (September 1929): n.p. “La couverture du livre ouvert est bien étale sur la table, les pages apparaissent dans toute leur ampleur et à plat depuis la première jusqu'à la dernière, vous les tournez aisément d'un geste machinal. . . . L'œil, aussi sûr de lui que la main est calme, va sans fatigue, d'une extrémité de la ligne à l'autre; la tête ne bouge que lentement, n'ayant point d'effort à accomplir pour suivre des mots courbés et chercher, au creux du livre, les dernières lettres de chaque ligne."

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its binding or pages. Sentences and paragraphs tend to bend according to the curved surface of each page, and sometimes the end of a line is interrupted at the extremity of the bound page as well as the volume’s internal edge. By contrast, spiral binding mechanizes the reading process by greasing the movement of both hand and eye. The advertisement’s reference to reading with a “mechanical gesture” indicates that this binding system was not merely a new design for novelty’s sake, but was intended to be a radical and ideological proposal for reading in the machine age. Moreover, this technique allowed Photographie to show reproduced images in their entirety by enabling the reader to open the volume flat, which allowed for easier appreciation of the photographs on its pages. Therefore, it perfectly answered Photographie’s ambition to showcase “the most beautiful photographs.”

The Juxtaposition of Images on Double-Page Spread

Except for Waldemar George’s lengthy essay, this volume’s use of textual elements was limited. In this period, as society increasingly demanded to be educated and informed by visual elements, texts were gradually replaced by images.45 The German typographer

Johannes Molzahn exclaimed, “Stop reading! Look!” in describing the visual immediacy of the Weimar illustrated newspapers with photographic images. This became a catchphrase to represent the environment surrounding printed media in the interwar period. Images started to be “read” as if they were the equivalent of texts. The increasing reliance on vision underlay the spread and development of photography and its related business across Europe, mediated

45 Johannes Molzahn, “Nicht mehr lessen! Sehen!,” Das Kunstblatt 12, no. 3 (1928): 80.

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by the dissemination of printed media. Photographie was born out of this changing social and visual paradigm.

Indeed, Photographie requires an active “reading” of images. In its double-page spreads, each pair of photographs creates formal, thematic, and narrative juxtapositions and sequences. As an optical unit, each photograph has its own subject and content, and thus can be appreciated independently. At the same time, the significance of one photograph within the volume is determined and animated by its association or contradistinction with the adjacent image. The reader is invited and expected to grasp this relationship based on a comparison of the two images’ visual components. Each photograph gains its meaning—its “photographic message,” to use Roland Barthes’s famous expression—not in relation to the text, as in the traditional publication, but to a neighboring image.46 In this sense, the series of images in

Photographie functioned linguistically: the meaning of a sign (image, in this case) is fixed by its difference and distinction from other signs.

Here I propose the following four categories of image juxtaposition based on the ways a reader might receive it: single-authored unit, visual comparison, thematic association, and narrative sequence.47 More than one category may apply in some image pairs, and some examples do not fit any of the categories. These principles of image arrangement became the standard editorial method of Photographie, and the following nine issues took the same approach.

46 Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,” in Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 15-31.

47 Denoyelle also attempted to group the images in Photogaphie according to their visual and thematic aspects. However, her grouping does not take the reader’s reception into consideration. Denoyelle, “Arts et métiers graphiques,” 13.

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The first group is simple: two or more works by the same photographer are displayed on both sides of a double-page spread. This type of juxtaposition not only forms a minimal portfolio of single authorship, but also spotlights each volume’s featured practitioners. The number of participants and images in an album is limited. Each volume of Photographie customarily contained 120 to 130 pages, and this size remained consistent throughout the magazine’s existence. In most issues, one photographer is represented by only one picture.

When one person contributes more than two photographs, they are often arranged separately and combined with other photographers’ work based on their visual and thematic merits

(which composes the following categories of juxtaposition). Consequently, the number of single-authored units is also limited, and by this token, this category should be considered a privileged treatment. In Photographie 1930, this arrangement was reserved for Moholy-Nagy,

Kertész, Albin Guillot, Zuber, and Sheeler (fig. 2-35), all of whom were either widely recognized or closely connected to the magazine and its publishers. The works in

Photographie 1930 were mainly provided by the editors’ friends and close acquaintances. In later issues, the editors opened their doors to individuals around the world who submitted their photographs. As the annual attracted a greater number of potential participants and gradually became a “who’s who”48 of international photography, this first grouping’s significance weighed more heavily over the course of the annual’s publication.

The second group consists of the comparison of two works’ visual components, including form, color, and composition. This category was the most frequently employed arrangement throughout the album’s existence and represents the formal and aesthetic quality of Photographie’s content. For instance, a contre-plongée picture of Pont transbordeur by

48 Alain Fleig, Etant donné l’âge de la lumière II: Naissance de la photographie comme média (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 1997), 244.

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Lotar is printed side by side with a close-up shot of a grasshopper with outstretched wings by

Le Charles (fig. 2-36). These two images, representing the typical visual repertoires of the

New Photography, are brought together by their formal commonalities. They display the same composition, centered on two diagonal lines forming a large “V” shape in the middle of the picture. The contrast between the industrial and organic subjects, as well as the difference in the subjects’ original scale, makes this similarity all the more interesting.

Likewise, a pair of works by Moholy-Nagy (fig. 2-17) contrasts plongée and contre- plongée views and shows the same diagonal composition. This case also offers an oppositional juxtaposition of tonal value. The color schemes of these two images are reversed: while the background of the picture on the left is filled with black and accentuated by the figures on a small boat in white, the one on the right is almost dominated by white, with some black areas created by the female figure and the ladder. It is noteworthy that the image on the left was also printed in Foto-Auge, but as a negative print (fig. 2-37). Photographie changed it into a positive. Had the work retained the original color scheme, the juxtaposition of these two images would have been less attractive.

In the third category, thematic association, two works are connected by their subject matter. On the simplest level, pictures of the same genre, such as landscape, portrait, nude, and still life, are often printed side by side. The relationship between the two images can also be implied through visual metaphor and metonymy. For example, a photogram of scissors, thread, and needles by Tabard appears next to a publicity shot for textiles by Masclet (fig. 2-

38). These two works represent the tools and material of a tailor; thus, they are wittily and metonymically connected. This juxtaposition also places the reader in the position of the absent artisan facing his or her stock-in-trade.

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The last, and presumably the most historically relevant, juxtaposition is the narrative sequence. Sougez’s photograph of the ocean liner Île-de-France is put next to an image of

Manhattan skyscrapers provided by the photo agency International News Photos (fig. 2-39).

Since this ocean liner, in reality, connected the ports of Le Havre and New York, this juxtaposition suggests a journey across the Atlantic and consequently engages the readers’ imagination and their active “reading.” Had they been reproduced singly, each of the images would similarly represent the latest means of transportation and the symbolic American architectural complex beloved and dreamt by Europeans in this period, respectively.49

Because of the juxtaposition, however, the reader finds new significance in them by imagining the journey on the Atlantic between the two points of embarkation and disembarkation. This type of sequential arrangement was typically employed in publicity and illustrated magazines. As its reception involves a passage of time to appreciate and connect one image to the other, this juxtaposition emerged out of montage techniques used in film. In transposing the technique developed in the most technologically advanced medium onto the paper support, this kind of arrangement placed Photographie into contemporary paradigm of vision.

The Revolution of Mise en Page

In addition to the cover design, binding, and juxtapositions of images, Photographie also embodies contemporary reconsideration of page layout, or mise en page as it was called.

The album featured a unique arrangement of images and irregular blank spaces. Reproduced photographs are laid out with varying balances between the size of the images and the

49 There were a number of projects to construct skyscrapers in Europe, including Le Corbusier’s Plan voisin and El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbügel, both conceived in 1925.

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proportion of the margins. While some photographs are printed full bleed, others are positioned alongside one edge of the page, shrunken in the middle, or pressed to one of the ends, leaving various shapes of blank space on the paper (fig. 2-40). Such an arrangement encourages the movement of the reader’s eye and transforms the conventional linear way of consuming a book. This unusual layout shocked the reader and even appeared to be scandalous for those who were familiar with traditional book design. In Beaux-Arts magazine, the French art critic Georges Brunon-Guardia opined, “If one had to make one criticism it would concern the material presentation of the publication, which the modernist mentality simply spoils. On the one hand, its deliberately illogical page layout of certain images, cut off without any margin or located at the corner of a leaf, can only make them less beautiful to look at.”50

As he describes, this layout was based on the “modernist inclination” to break with conventions in printing. In traditional French publications, the balance between the justification and the surrounding blank space on a page was determined according to the standardized printing format known as the canon des ateliers. Established in the eighteenth century, this system fixed the proportion of a printed page by defining the size and position of each component on the page.51 This rule was automatically applied at printer’s shops.

Publishers customarily left the dummy of a book containing the justification and illustrations

50 Georges Brunon-Guardia, “Photographie: Arts et métiers graphiques,” Beaux-Arts (May 19, 1930). This article was glued on the scrapbook, “Album de coupures de presse,” Fonds Peignot. "S'il faut une critique, elle s'adressera à la présentation matérielle de l'album, qu'un parti pris de modernisme abîme tout simplement. D'une part, la mise en pages volontairement illogique de certaines images, rognées sans aucune marge ou logées dans un coin de la feuille, ne peut que les rendre moins belles à voir."

51 Daniel Renault, “La Mise en page,” in Histoire de l’édition française, vol. 4, Le Livre concurrencé, 1900-1950, ed. Henri-Jean Martin, Roger Chartier, and Jean-Pierre Vivet (Paris: Promodis, 1987), 377. According to the canon, the size of justification should be three-quarters of a page in deluxe books and two-thirds in ordinary books. Many of the images in Photographie follow the former, which suggests that the volume was conceived as a deluxe publication.

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to a printer who processed the final product by following the canon. This convention remained intact for almost two centuries. Photographie’s printing layout liberated the page from these established rules.

Since printed matter was a fundamental vehicle for the reformation of graphic art in this period, the reconsideration of printing layout became one of the essential concerns among contemporary publishers and graphic artists. Avant-garde theorists and practitioners, including Moholy-Nagy and Tschichold, aspired to liberate the page from past conventions and modernize its format. For that purpose, they advocated not only image sequences, but also the use of asymmetrical layouts or blank spaces as expressive entities. Moholy-Nagy dedicates the last section of his Malerei, Fotografie, Film to the manuscript for a film project,

“Dynamics of the Metropolis” (fig. 2-41). This manuscript was realized as dynamic visual composition of text and images and embodies the new aesthetics and theories of page layout.

Words in various fonts and photographs fill the entire space of a page or a double-page spread in varying sizes and relationships. This makes a clear contrast with a conventional page layout defined by the linear and regular setting of body text and illustrations. Likewise, Tschichold’s

Die Neue Typographie (1928) reevaluates the expressive and plastic value of the blank space on a page. According to him, unprinted areas had meant nothing in conventional approaches to printing, as they were deemed to be simply the leftover of the printed part. However, he redefined this empty space “as much a proper element as printed matter” and reconsidered its possible contribution to the modernization of layout and reading experiences.52

Such reconsideration of page layout was due largely to the perfection of modern printing techniques and photomechanical processes. Conventionally, the design of a page had

52 Jan Tschichold, The New Typography, trans. Ruari McLean (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 222.

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been determined and restricted by the material condition of the typographic printing plate.

Because of the angular shape of letter blocks, the arrangement of text and the placing of illustrations were regulated by rectangular or columnar shapes. Due to the halftone process perfected in the 1890s, the production of a printing plate containing both text and image became possible, and the printing process became much simpler. Still, the layout was bound by columns and rectangles. This issue was resolved in the interwar period with the perfection of rotogravure, a technique that was crucial for the innovation of page layout.53

Rotogravure’s principle mechanism is the application of an intaglio printing plate to the cylinder of a rotary press, which enabled the dramatic multiplication of photographic images of high quality in mass-circulating magazines, especially illustrated weeklies such as

VU, Regards (1932-1939), and Voilà (1931-1940) in France.54 Rotogravure plates are processed from transparent film. Editors can cut and paste printed films with text and images and place them freely on one large sheet that will then be transposed to a printing plate.

Because of the use of the intaglio process, this printing plate does not reverse the original film’s tonal value upon processing. Therefore, editors can foresee the exact outcome of the printing while they are at work arranging the components of a page. They can even handwrite images and texts alongside other mechanically produced photographs or printed letters.

Accordingly, editors and designers in the interwar period started to explore new aesthetics and methods that engaged the reader by “channeling their gaze, establishing hierarchies, and creating relationships between body text, headings, and captions” as the French photo

53 Arts et métiers graphiques published an article on this process. René Zuber, “Les procédés de reproduction graphique: Les formes en creux,” Arts et métiers graphiques (November 1929): 855-58.

54 Michel Frizot, “Photo/Graphics in Modern French Magazines: The Possibilities of Rotogravure, 1926-1935,” Photo/Graphics (Paris: Jeu de Paume, [2007]), 5-12, accessed August 28, 2018, http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/Photographisme_GB.pdf.

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historian Michel Frizot points out.55 This transformation of printing technology gave editors a far greater influence and authority, which made directors of major illustrated magazines, such as Vogel and Stefan Lorant (director of Münchner Illustrierte Presse, and later of Picture

Post), the stars of the day.

The concern for layout was also relevant in the field of publicity, of which Studio

Deberny et Peignot was the leading firm in interwar France. Like illustrated magazines, publicity needs to immediately attract the viewer’s gaze and precisely convey its message by visual means. For that purpose, a well-calculated and carefully contrived arrangement of its components, including photography, typography, and other graphic elements, was indispensable. One of the leading Parisian design firms and a rival of Deberny et Peignot,

Atelier Tolmer, published the primer Mise en page (1931), which aimed to explain theories and methods of arranging text and images in publicity (fig. 2-42). Tolmer fabricated boxes and packages for luxury gifts and products, such as perfume, cosmetic goods, and chocolates.

In the 1920s, in order to expand its business, the company opened a graphic design studio with photographic facilities on the Quai de Bourbon. This studio provided advertising designs for clients such as the watchmaker Piguet and the fashion designer Patou. Although the company did not engage in the publication of magazines and books as did Deberny et Peignot,

Tolmer was also a leading Parisian graphic design studio where Alexei Brodovitch, Boucher, and Jean Moral worked. Mise en page was edited by Tolmer and published as a bilingual book by The Studio, a London publisher. The overall page layout of this publication was entrusted to Louis Caillaud, Tolmer’s in-house designer. The content consists of photographic images, and its aesthetic approach follows examples provided by modernist graphic design.

55 Frizot and de Veigy, VU: The Story of A Magazine, 18.

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Reconciling Reading and Looking

Photographie reflected and absorbed the contemporary innovations of printing that produced modern publicity and illustrated magazines. However, I would argue that the album proposed a different process of consuming photographic images from mass media by offering a more contemplative consumption of photographs in a manner similar to the traditional experience of reading books. A comparison between Photographie and interwar illustrated magazines clarifies the uniqueness of the album’s consumption. These two types of printed media are both concerned with photography in print and share many commonalities, especially their sequential presentation of reproduced images. However, the consumption of these two are almost diametrically opposed. On the one hand, modern media depends upon the immediacy and quickness of perception. The pages of illustrated weeklies typically contain a number of photographs on a double-page spread. They are designed so that the reader can grasp the content at a single, quick glance (fig. 2-43). Their articles usually begin and finish in a hurry within a page or two. Information in the guise of photographic images flashes and displays itself. On the other hand, Photographie is based on slow perception. As a rule, no more than two pictures are printed on one page in the album, and in most cases, only one picture is reproduced on a given page. As the number of images the reader can see at one time is limited, the reader is led to spend enough time on each image to fully appreciate its subject and formal qualities.

Flexible printing margins and the sequence of images across pages play an important role in enhancing a more contemplative reading in Photographie. For instance, Kertész’s Fork is printed next to a picture of an apple by Steichen (fig. 2-44). Though presented separately,

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the two works are both based on the camera’s penetrating realism in the manner of the New

Objectivity. They also present a world solely composed of objects in the absence of human intervention. However, just as the pair of works by Tabard (scissors, thread, and needles) and

Masclet (textile) (fig. 2-38) evokes the presence of an absent protagonist, the combination of an eating utensil and food suggests the person who consumes them. The reader can identify with this absent subject, as photography’s truthfulness and reproducibility make the photographed objects equivalents and doubles of the real objects. The use of printing margins amplified the effect of this juxtaposition. These two images are printed with large and seemingly irregular margins; the fruit is pushed to the bottom edge of the left page, and the fork to the top right corner. At first glance, the distance between the two suggests a disconnection. However, as one realizes that the shadows of these two objects are cast in the same direction, one is able to reconnect the images as if they were arranged on the same table under the same light source. Accordingly, the blank space between them becomes transformed into an absent table. The distance and the diagonal positioning of the two pictures also creates a perspectival illusion. The fruit is oversized compared to the fork. The oblique arrangement of the two photographs on the double-page spread renders the white space as perspectival recession, as if the fruit was located closer to the reader while the utensil was on the far side of the imaginary table.

Sequences of images in Photographie sometimes span more than one unit of the double-page spread. For instance, an image of an ocean liner’s funnel partially hidden by a flag, by Anton Stankowski, and that of a sleeping mother and child by Burchartz (fig. 2-45) are connected by their compositions, which share a central diagonal line. On the following page spread, the reader encounters portraits of a woman and of a baby, both taken by Albin

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Guillot (fig. 2-46). Because these two separately printed photographs directly follow

Burchartz's image of mother and child, these two distinct works by Albin Guillot immediately suggest a familial connection. In this regard, the reader is required to turn the pages in order to entirely appreciate and make sense of the arrangement, and the effect of the juxtaposition unfolds gradually as the reader turns the pages. Viewing Photographie thus involves the necessary hand movements required to read a book as well as “reading between the lines” instead of immediately grasping the whole at a single glance. This fundamental action of leafing through pages is facilitated by the binding technique reliure spirale, which eases the reader’s movements. Whereas illustrated magazines (and also publicity) produce quick perceptions based on an instantaneous glance, photo albums require contemplation. These two kinds of media belong to the same age, but the reader's reception of them is based on two entirely different durations.

The difference between Photographie and illustrated weeklies also concerns the environment of reception and the publications’ material nature. Illustrated weeklies are intended to be thrown away after consumption. The magazines’ reception is collective, as it is meant to be distributed to as many people as possible. It thus works on a logic of what Walter

Benjamin calls “exhibition value.” The physicality of the reproduced images and the magazines themselves only counts apart in terms of the communicative capacity of the images contained therein. By contrast, Photographie aimed at an isolated and private consumption by bibliophiles and elites. The album was also treated as an art object that still belonged to the realm of Benjaminian “cult value.” In theory, an album, as a publication, is printed in number and can be reprinted again, thus not a unique art object like a painting. However, in reality, the individual and intimate manner in which it is consumed makes it resemble an original and

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precious art piece. In short, even though Photographie manifested numerous modern qualities directly influenced by modernism, it still presented a more traditional understanding of art and the book medium. And as such, the images in the album remained aesthetic, while its reception was based on “reading.”

Looking at Typography

As Photographie involves numerous ways of “reading” photographs, it epitomizes the way in which images took over the role played by texts in an industrialized and increasingly visual society. However, the relation between the image and text was by no means ceci tuera cela in Arts et métiers graphiques. As it is represented by “Stop Reading! Look!” the changes of visual experience in interwar print media have often been interpreted as the total replacement of text by image, and thus a reversal of the intellectual and perceptual hierarchy dominated by the texts. With the advent of industrialization and mechanization, images came to be embraced because of their immediacy and efficiency, as a means of communication perfectly fit to fast-paced modern society. However, this “textualization” of images should be considered as a reciprocal process with the “visualization” of texts rather than the diminution of the text under the overturning of the existing hierarchy. The activities led by Peignot succinctly represent these two simultaneous developments. On the one hand, Photographie presents images with the function of text. On the other hand, projects such as Bifur and

Divertissements typographiques, both discussed in chapter 1, provide texts with the characteristics of the image. Accordingly, it is also necessary to locate Photographie in relation to the promotion of visual typography by Deberny et Peignot.

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“Typovision,” Precursor of Photographie

The process of signification in Photographie depends primarily on the layout of images. The prototype and first attempt to reform methods of page layout in Peignot’s works can be found in his efforts to modernize typography in the mid- to late 1920s. While Bifur and

Divertissements typographiques represented the transformation of the letter’s shape and their combination in use, Peignot also innovated the mise en page of typography. When he launched the typeface Sphinx in 1925 and Bifur in 1929, Peignot produced promotional booklets for these new alphabets (fig. 2-47). Continuing a tradition from Georges Peignot’s tenure in the pre-World War I period, the Deberny et Peignot typefoundry created a specimen pamphlet for distribution among its clients upon the release of each new letter design. These small publications usually contain diagrams of upper and lower case letters in varying sizes along with examples of the font’s actual application in materials such as books, advertisements, or stationery. Reflecting the foundry’s creativity and artistic sophistication,

Deberny et Peignot released these pamphlets in various paper formats, ranging from a small booklet to a large, foldable sheet of paper (fig. 2-48). However, the printing layout and content always remained the same. They routinely and programmatically presented letters using fixed templates, as these were demonstrative pieces for presenting new alphabet designs.

In contrast to these conventional materials, booklets for Sphinx and Bifur, the first visual typographic designs of Deberny et Peignot, arranged letter specimens in a free printing layout based solely on the alphabets’ visual merits. The one for Sphinx (fig. 2-47) is an outstanding example that attests to the development of the presentation of typefaces. Phrases and texts in Sphinx are juxtaposed, isolated, or exaggerated in size. At times, they are shaped in an inverted triangle that draws the reader’s eyes to the end of the page, imitating the form

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of a traditional vignette known as cul-de-lampe. Some phrases go across multiple pages and require the reader to turn the page to complete the wording. The letters acquire their meaning in distinction from other letters, and they are printed so that they interact with the print margins as well as integrate the reader’s action of turning pages, in precisely the same manner as Photographie. The pamphlet for Bifur, entitled Seule une lettre n’est rien (1929) (Alone a

Letter is Nothing) (fig. 2-49), used a similar format and layout. It furthered the principles seen in the booklet for Sphinx by using wider blank spaces to emphasize the shape of each letter.

Its title also strongly implies the necessity of connecting and distinguishing letters so they can fulfill their linguistic function. The title also seems to indicate the insufficiency of conventional forms of letter presentation. It was not only the alphabet’s readability that counted, but also the presentation of its visual properties.

Peignot later named this format of typographic arrangement “Typovision.” He described the booklet of Sphinx as follows: “Breaking with all the traditions of page layout, it is one of the first examples of this reform of typography that he [Peignot] later named

TYPOVISION, in opposition to common typography, called reading typography.”56 In these publications, Peignot put Valéry’s thesis from “Les Deux vertus d'un livre” into practice by rendering a page into an image through its engaging layout. This practice paved the way for the sophisticated page presentation seen in Photographie.

This visualization of text was based on reflections on the letter and its expressive values in French literature and poetry beginning with Stéphane Mallarmé’s Un coup de dés

56 Charles Peignot, “Biographie de Charles Peignot,” 6, Don Froissart, Box 6, Folder "Biographies," Fonds Peignot. The catalogue of Sphinx "rompant avec toutes les traditions de la mise en page, est une des premiers manifestations de cette réforme de typographie qu'il baptisa plus tard TYPOVISION, par opposition à la typographie courante, dite de lecture."

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jamais n’abolira le hasard57 (fig. 2-50). It is noteworthy that issue 17 of Arts et métiers graphiques (the issue following Photographie) featured Guillaume Apollinaire’s calligrammes as the subject of its leading article (fig. 2-51). This article was written shortly after the release of an anthology of his calligrammes by Editions Nouvelle Revue Française.

The realization of this anthology attests to a renewed interest in such creative typographic and visual works by French poets as the emphasis on vision gained hold. In this regard,

Photographie was established upon the continuing reflection of texts in the French modern literature and profoundly rooted in the art of “reading.”

Maurice Cloche’s Alphabet: The Reciprocity of Photography and Typography

The “Typovision” booklets and Photographie testify to the reciprocity and interdependence between photography and typography—or looking and reading—in the business of Peignot. This tenet is most directly embodied by Alphabet (1932), an original but understudied publication of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques (fig. 2-52). This volume is composed of fifty-two unbound leaves, half of which are actual silver gelatin prints (fig. 2-53) of photographs taken by Maurice Cloche. These twenty-six photographs are alternately interleaved with twenty-six sheets of thick and matte paper, each bearing a word beginning with a letters from A to Z (fig. 2-54). These words are printed in five colors (red, brown, black, orange, and blue) and different typefaces owned by Deberny et Peignot, including

Auriol, Sphinx, Bifur, and Europe. Alphabet is thus a demonstrative combination of two of

Peignot’s principal stocks-in-trade, namely photography and typography.

57 This piece was first published in an international literary journal, Cosmopolis, in 1897, then released as a book in 1914.

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The Reattribution of the Publishing Date

Since the pages of Alphabet contain no clear indication of the publication year, scholars and collectors have believed that it was released in 1929, hence making it Arts et métiers graphiques’ first publishing project of photography.58 Therefore, it has been treated as a prototype of Photographie and interpreted as a transitional work that represented the gradual replacement of text by image. However, I insist that this date has been wrongly attributed and instead propose that the volume came out in 1932. Two facts contradict the designation of the year 1929. First, the office address of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques printed on the title page of Alphabet, 18 rue Séguier, was not used until 1932. The company’s headquarters was first located at 3 rue Séguier, according to its statute drafted in 1926. This address appeared in almost every publication from Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques until the company moved to 18 rue Séguier in 1932. Issue 27 of Arts et métiers graphiques, released in January 1932, announces the opening of their new location.59 As this address, 18 rue Séguier, had never been seen in the company’s publications before this year, Alphabet cannot be a product made in 1929.

Secondly, Alphabet was first advertised in Arts et métiers graphiques in July 1932:

“Alphabets portfolio of 25 [sic.] original photographs by Maurice Cloche accompanied by a typographic presentation of DEBERNY PEIGNOT [sic.] / Limited edition of 175 copies, numbered and signed by the photographer and editors. Price: 350 francs.”60 This

58 For example, Bouqueret, Paris, 40-45.

59 “A Nos Lecteurs,” Arts et métiers graphiques 27 (January 1932): n.p.

60 Art et métiers graphiques 30 (July, 1932): n.p. “Alphabet portefeuille de 25 photographies originales de Maurice Cloche accompagnée d'une présentation typographique de DEBERNY PEIGNOT / Tirage limité à 175 exemplaires, tous numérotés et contresignés du photographe et de l'éditeurs. Prix: 350 francs.”

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announcement was printed alongside advertisements for other AMG books, including a photo album, A Travers les nuages, Photographie 1932, and a special issue of Arts et métiers graphiques on Caricature, all of which had either just appeared or would soon be on sale. In addition to these two facts, the design of the volume’s title page also places it in the early

1930s. It is mainly composed in Europe, which made the official debut in 1930 (fig. 2-52).

The page’s clean and sophisticated layout also reflects the aesthetics of the post-Photographie period.

The misattribution of the publishing date may be due to confusion with another book published in 1929 by Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques. This book has a similar title,

Alphabets, in the plural (the title of Cloche’s volume is in the singular, Alphabet) (fig. 2-55).

Alphabets is a collection of eighty plates of diverse letter designs and typefaces from medieval manuscripts to the most recent creations, including Futura and Bifur. It was originally edited by German publisher Herbert Hoffmann in collaboration with three designers and typographers, Albert Bruckner, Max Hertiwig, and Rudolf Koch.61 The fact that both

Alphabets and Alphabet are rarely found in library collections today may be one of the practical reasons for the confusion.

The new date of 1932 places Cloche’s Alphabet in the company’s most prolific period, during which Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques produced its best publications on photography. Besides Photographie 1932, the year 1932 saw the release of two independent volumes: Paris de nuit by Brassaï and A Travers les nuages edited by Manfred Curry. Paris de nuit (1932) (fig. 2-56) achieved the highest popularity and success of the publications of

Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, due to the quality of its content and overall presentation.

61 Four page excerpts of Alphabets are reproduced in the ‘hors-texte’ feature, Arts et métiers graphiques 18 (July 15, 1930): n.p. The French edition of Alphabets sold for 200 francs (150 francs for the subscribers of AMG).

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The nocturnal photographs of Parisian street and nightclubs taken by Brassaï on his habitual walks at night represent the Paris of Charles Baudelaire, populated by flaneurs and clochards.

The rich contrast and gradation of black and white in these photographs are made even richer by the exquisite use of the héliogravure printing process.62 The volume also employs reliure spirale, and the cover boldly reproduces a photograph of wet stone cobbles in a double-page format, with red typeface arrangements. This publication design was certainly based on the design principle of Photographie, but the volume enhanced its visual impact with a more expressive cover design. Concurrently, the much-less studied and lesser known A Travers les nuages (1932) (fig. 2-57), edited by the German-born American scientist Manfred Curry, is one of the best collections of aerial photographs ever published. Like many photo albums released in this period, this volume also used héliogravure but in three colors of black, blue, and green. In addition to the beauty and refinement of its photographs, A Travers les nuages features various printing layout seen in Photographie, including full bleed format, free use of blank space, and sequential juxtaposition of image. It thus typifies the editorial aesthetics established by Photographie.63

62 Héliogravure is an intaglio printing process based on the principle that bichromated gelatin hardens when it is exposed to light. Briefly, a tissue coated with gelatin is exposed under a transparent positive, then pressed onto a sheet of copper to make an intaglio printing plate. The printed image thus reproduces the tonal value of the original positive by means of the amount of ink each concave and ditch contains. Héliogravure was developed by the Austrian artist Karel Klic in 1879 and was perfected in the 1910s. Since then, this process has been considered one of the best printing processes for precisely and accurately rendering the tonal value of original photographic images. Its rich gradation of black is often described as almost “tactile.” Yet, as it consumes a large amount of ink, it is also an expensive printing process. Therefore, héliogravure was and has been mainly employed in deluxe photographic books, including Paris de nuit (1933), Moï Ver’s Paris (1931), and Photographie. It was also famously employed in Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work.

63 This volume was also printed in multiple languages in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany between 1932 and 1934. Further research is needed to determine which album was the original, and which were the translated volumes.

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The Play of Words and Images

Maurice Cloche, better known as a film director today, worked as one of the in-house photographers of Studio Deberny et Peignot in the 1930s. After finishing his studies at the

École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the École Normale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, he pursued his career as a typographer in the studio. He worked under the tutelage of Vox, who described Cloche as his “best student,” then soon became a photographer.64 Before Alphabet,

Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques published Cloche’s photographs as 60 aspects de l'Exposition Coloniale, on the occasion of the 1931 Paris Colonial Fair. This album offered a virtual tour of the fair by presenting pavilions and exhibits according to their actual disposition in the bois de Vincennes and following the recommended route of the visit.

Significantly, this was the first photography album published by Editions Arts et Métiers

Graphiques after Photographie. This fact suggests that Cloche was already an important figure for the studio even though he had been working as a photographer for only a short time.

Alphabet was the second collection of Cloche’s works. As it contained original photographic prints, only 175 copies of the volume were made, each numbered and signed on the first page by Cloche and Peignot.65 The inclusion of photographic prints also made this collection the most expensive publication to date of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, with a price of 350 francs.

64 Maximillien Vox, “Charles Peignot et son temps,” Communication et langages 14 (1972): 58.

65 As most of its copies seem to have sold to private and corporate clients of Deberny et Peignot and subscribers of Arts et métiers graphiques, almost no public library collections have a copy of this volume. (Similarly, other AMG publications are rare in public collections.) The copy I examined was in the collection of the library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This MoMA copy bears a serial number “I.” The library does not have a record of the volume’s donor or previous owner(s). Considering that the two founding figures of the interwar photographic scene in the United States, Julien Lévy and Beaumont Newhall, had contact with Peignot, it is possible that one of them owned it, then later donated it to the library.

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Alphabet offers an eclectic collection of photographs that can be described as an amalgamation of Surrealism, New Vision, Constructivism, and New Objectivity (fig. 2-53).

While some works show similarities with uncanny Surrealist photographs by capturing, for example, a mannequin or a close-up shot of a monstrous sea creature, others reveal the precision and attentive gaze of the New Objectivity. Cloche also employed experimental techniques, such as the photograms and double-exposures favored by the artist of the New

Vision. This eclecticism was typical of photographers in interwar France who absorbed these various kinds of photographic movements and their visual idioms almost simultaneously under the encompassing rubric of the “New Photography.” French photographers experimented with different techniques and aesthetics without making any clear distinction between the specific ideological backgrounds particular to each movement. This mixture was also because many of the photographers worked for commercial studios and projects, in which they were required to adjust their style in response to the ever increasing and changing demands of their clients and employers. Cloche’s works thus constitute a stylized collection of the New Photography’s visual repertoire.

On the sheets with alphabets, letters and words are arranged in the same manner as the

“typovision” booklets: placed freely on the page with varying balance and proportion between letters and blank spaces. They are printed horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and sometimes upside down, reversing the letter order of a word (fig. 2-54). Their relative size on a page also significantly varies. Some are enlarged to the edges of the paper, while the others are shrunken into a corner. This variation of layouts renders the typographic arrangements in the volume more expressive than any other previous attempts by the company, and represents the maturity of the methods and aesthetics Peignot had been developing since the mid-1920s.

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The interleaving of these two types of plates invites the reader to associate reading and looking in a more direct way than in Photographie and the “typovision” booklets. In Alphabet, all the plates are single-sided, and typographic pages and photographic prints alternate one after another. Consequently, one first sees and reads a word, then looks at a photograph. A given word projects a certain image in the mind of the reader according to its denotation and connotation, which determines the interpretation of the following photograph. For instance, the first word in the volume is “Anonyme” (anonymous) (fig. 2-58) composed in Europe. The following photographic print shows a façade of an apartment building with the windows mostly covered by curtains (fig. 2-59). Having the word “anonyme” in mind, the reader is led to “read” the image in association with the word’s meaning. In this case, the banality and dryness of the multi-storied building façade becomes the representation of an anonymous urban dwelling.

In following this original order of the volume from a word plate to a photograph, one may assume that photography is dependent on the text in Alphabet, as the previous word always determines the reader’s understanding of the following image. However, the order of texts and images in this volume is by no means fixed, because the plates in Alphabet are not bound. The readers do not have to follow their original placement, and are free to reshuffle the plates at their whim. The position of typographic plates and photographic prints can be reversed. It is even possible to separate the two groups and create new sequences composed only of texts or only of images. There is no hierarchical order in the two elements. This changeable nature reflects that the two elements, typography and photography—thus reading and looking—were given the same importance in Peignot’s works.

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If we compare Cloche’s Alphabet with another Alphabet published in the same year, the uniqueness of the first becomes clearer. In 1932, Editions Antoine Roche released a volume entitled Alphabet with photographs by Sougez (fig. 2-60). This relatively small publication in a square format is a so-called abécédaire (ABC book) for children. Similar to Cloche’s, this

Alphabet is composed of pages with words beginning with a letter from A to Z and photographs corresponding to each word. The two photographers certainly knew each other’s work through their mutual acquaintances. Sougez’s volume was edited by Henri Jonquières, an art book publisher and one of the editorial members of Arts et métiers graphiques in charge of the magazine’s page layouts. Its release was also announced in Arts et métiers graphiques in January 1933.66 Sougez was also close to Peignot, since he worked as the official collaborator of the first Photographie.

Although the two volumes have much in common, each one presents a different relationship between text and image. As an abécédaire, Sougez’s book embodies the idea that photography is a type of visual literacy by providing education based on the straightforward association of image and text.67 For instance, the first double-page spread for “A” shows the word “Apricot” on the left and a photograph of the fruit on the right. The following twenty- five pairs are in the same format and, because they are bound, impossible to shuffle into another order. There is no room for free association of words and images. Consequently, signifiants and signifiés in Sougez’s volume have a one-to-one relationship, an essential condition for the book’s fulfilling its purpose as a pedagogic publication. Since the words are expected to operate only as phonetic signs, the arrangement of letters focuses on the regularity

66 “Actualité Graphique,” Arts et métiers graphiques 33 (January 1933): 48.

67 Juliette Lavie, "Alphabet d'Emmanuel Sougez: Une œuvre manifeste?," Textimage 3 (Summer 2009), http://www.revue-textimage.com/04_a_la_lettre/lavie.pdf.

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and legibility by following a fixed format throughout the volume: each page prints a letter of alphabet in majuscule and miniscule with a word in three languages, French, English, and

German. This is thus an exemplar of the abécédaire genre and a straightforward representation of the Saussurean linguistic relationship between words and images.

In contrast, Cloche’s Alphabet offers a reconsideration of such established hierarchies and systems of words and images. On the one hand, expressive and visual typographic arrangements show they can be liberated from its phonetic function. On the other hand, images, if arranged in a manner similar to Photographie or composed as rebus, can gain the same textual function as phonetic signs. This uniqueness of Cloche’s Alphabet, especially in the part of typography, was certainly based on the commercial motives of Deberny et Peignot, for which the promotion of their typographic stock-in-trade was the primary interest. Yet, its distinct format represents the complexity of the relationship between words and images in the growing visually oriented society in the interwar period. It offers a reflection on the functions of texts and images that cannot be summarized by simple “Stop Reading! Look!”

International Dissemination and Afterlife of Photographie

Because of its portability and transportability, Photographie was disseminated across national borders and was distributed in many European countries and, especially, the United

States.68 Soon after the publication of its first issue in 1930, Photographie became highly sought after by American curators, librarians, gallerists, and art historians. Among others, it was Julien Lévy—one of the leading promoters of European avant-garde art, especially

68 The exact range of its distribution is unclear. However, it is likely that the album circulated in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, Russia, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland, judging from the addresses of those who submitted their works to Photographie throughout the 1930s.

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Surrealism, in the United States—who played a vital role in the development and dissemination of Photographie. Lévy organized a number of exhibitions on European photography in the 1930s and contributed to its promotion in the United States.69 He was a subscriber to Arts et métiers graphiques, and its publications certainly provided him with points of reference to the latest European photography. He asked Peignot to send copies of

Photographie on a yearly basis so that he could show it in his gallery as well as other publications, including Paris de nuit and Alphabet.70 If Photographie functioned as the principal conduit for international currents of the New Photography in France, the album also raised awareness of contemporary European photographic practices in the United States.71

The relation between Peignot and Lévy was not restricted to the purchase of photo albums and by no means unilateral. Lévy made an essential contribution to Photographie by providing American content. On February 6, 1932, Michel Girard, a staff member of Editions

Arts et Métiers Graphiques, sent a letter on behalf of Peignot to Lévy asking for contact information for outstanding American photographers, including George Platt Lynes and

Walker Evans, so that their work could be inserted into an upcoming issue of Photographie.72

While Evans did not respond to this call (and never appeared in the magazine’s pages), Platt

69 Julien Lévy Gallery to Charles Peignot, 1932, Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy Papers, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

70 Julien Lévy to Peignot, 1932, Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy Papers, and Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques to Julien Lévy, January 7, 1933, Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy Papers.

71 Lévy and Peignot presumably became acquainted through Henri Jonquiéres. Jonquiéres collaborated with Berenice Abbott in 1930 when Abbott initiated a book project for a group of Atget’s photographs that she had purchased from the dying photographer a few years earlier. Jonquière was the editor of the resulting volume, Atget: Photographe de Paris. Lévy financially supported Abbott for its realization, and the book was published by Wayhe gallery, where Lévy was working at the time. This publication put him in contact with the French publishing world, and certainly gave him an opportunity to connect with Peignot and Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques.

72 Michel Girard to Julien Lévy, February 5, 1932, Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy papers.

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Lynes sent his pictures to Peignot and soon became one of the stars of the annual in the early

1930s. This correspondence provides a critical and rare testimony to the way in which Peignot gathered photographs and photographers from around the world by mobilizing his international contacts. Lévy also attempted to organize an exhibition of the works included in

Photographie 1932 in his gallery in Manhattan. This project did not take place, unfortunately, due to logistical problems regarding the transportation of photographs to be exhibited.73

However, the fact that the exhibition was even planned indicates the favorable reception and popularity of the French album in the United States.

Because of the similarity of format, it is safe to assume that Photographie gave birth to the American photo annual U.S. Camera in 1935 (fig. 2-61). Photographie had offspring around the world, such as Modern Photography, published in London by the Studio (the publisher of Tolmer’s Mise en page) and Luci ed Ombre, published in Turin by D’Arte E.

Caranza. Among its contemporaries, U.S. Camera most faithfully copied Photographie’s innovative book design and appearance by borrowing three essential design elements from its

French counterpart: simple covers highlighting typeface arrangements, spiral binding, and a double-page format. The transplantation of the overall format to the American album indicates that Photographie’s reception was not limited to its photographic content, but was also appreciated for its total design as a sophisticated publication.

73 Julien Lévy to Charles Peignot, n.d. [1932], Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy papers; Arts et Métiers Graphiques to Julien Lévy, January 7, 1933, Box 2, Folder 3, Julien Lévy papers.

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Chapter 3

Separating Photo from Graphie:

A Shift from Art Photography to the Art of Photography in the Mid-1930s

Photographie 1930 gained considerable success by introducing the language of the

New Photography to the French photographic scene. Supported by optimism in this new trend, the first years of Photographie spearheaded modernist tenets and visual idioms in reproducing photographs under its direct influence. The next issue, Photographie 1931, kept featuring a number of works with unconventional subjects and the use of experimental techniques. A negative print by Franz Roh (fig. 3-1), one of the editors of Foto-Auge and the leading theorist of the New Vision, exhibits typical visual techniques favored by radical artists and photographers. Roh takes one of the most traditional artistic subjects, the female nude, and defamiliarizes it by capturing the figure from the angle of plongée and reversing the color tone. This picture thus represents photography’s revolution of perceptional experiences: overturning the established hierarchy of vision in art founded on the rules of linear perspective and the representation of reality. Maurice Tabard, the director of Studio Deberny et Peignot, kept exploring the camera’s precision and modernity, taking a picture of the wheel and mechanics of a racing car in close-up (fig. 3-2). Roger Parry’s uncanny photograph of rubber gloves (fig. 3-3) (originally executed to illustrate Léon-Paul Fargue’s poem Banalité in

1928) was influenced by Surrealism. Although the editorial board of the annual led by Peignot exclusively selected aesthetic pictures, the collection of these images testifies to the editors’ predilection for modernism.

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However, the editors soon began to dismiss such new expressions, and the content of

Photographie tilted toward conservatism in the mid-1930s. By the time Photographie 1935

(fig. 3-4) was published in 1934, the annual had almost abandoned the radical images it had embraced a few years earlier, instead printing many pictures that appropriated conventional artistic subjects and expressions. Idyllic landscapes (fig. 3-5) and sober still life arrangements

(fig. 3-6) dominated its pages. Each photograph was carefully crafted and meticulously finished: the composition was stable and balanced; the gradation of black and white—and thus the use of light and shadow—was perfectly controlled. Such refinement of picture- making indicates each photographer’s understanding and mastery of their métier, or professional skills, in their camera-handling.

Some photographers even directly relied on the academic tradition of French art. A nude photograph by Rémy Duval (fig. 3-7) undeniably refers to Ingresque neoclassical drawing studies, with the model’s elegant contrapposto and the delicate grisaille of black and white on a blank background. Duval’s classical nude is a sharp contrast to Roh’s negative print reproduced in the annual three years earlier, and the two works starkly demonstrate the change of taste in Photographie. In addition to the inclination toward traditional artistic motifs and aesthetic criteria, articles in the publications of Editions Arts et Métiers

Graphiques in this period did not hesitate to use such terms as “artists” and “art” to describe photographers and their practice. In short, editors, photographers, and critics connected to

Arts et métiers graphiques posited photography as an art form according to motifs and the perfection of picture-making that drew inspiration from academic traditions of the country.

The rise of this artistic photographic tendency appears to be anachronistic and paradoxical because the development of interwar photography was founded on criticism of

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photography’s direct appropriation of painterly terms, seen especially in Pictorialism. Since the nineteenth century, art photographers have attempted to define their works as fine art pieces by appropriating painterly subjects and surface effects. Critics and photographers, including Walter Benjamin, dismissed such an attitude as an erroneous use of photography and re-evaluated its medium-specific nature to objectively record reality. Accordingly,

Benjamin praised documentary approaches by August Sander, Germaine Krull, and Karl

Blossfeldt, all of whom explored the camera’s mechanical capacity.1 In contrast, though the photographs made in mid-1930s France do not repeat Pictorialism on the technical level, they seemed to appropriate traditional artistic and painterly subjects as well as picture-making methods. This chapter examines what brought about this anachronistic about-face and why, in the middle of the reformation of photography in the interwar period, this seemingly retrograde return to traditional models of art occurred in France. I especially discuss the rise of this conservative tendency in relation to the profusion of photographic images in graphic practices and photography’s complex against the tradition of art.

A Rappel à l’ordre in Photography

Xenophobia or Universalism?

In most previous studies of interwar French photography, the rise of conservatism in the mid-1930s has been ascribed to the growingly xenophobic and nationalistic cultural climate of the rappel à l'ordre and to the resulting urge for stipulating photography à la

1 Walter Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography” in Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Alan Trachtenberg (Sedgwick: Leette's Island Books, 1980), 199-216.

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française.2 Art in France in the period between the two World Wars has been characterized by classicism, naturalism, and traditionalism. The emergence of these tendencies closely connected to the changing socio-political contexts of interwar France. During and immediately after the First World War, former Cubists and Fauves in France, including Pablo

Picasso, Gino Severini, and André Derain, abandoned their radical experimentations and turned to classical subjects and styles. This about-face was based on the rise of nationalism and antipathy for Germans, who were deemed responsible for the decadence of art by introducing destructive modernist practices. As Kenneth Silver observes, pre-war modernism was judged boche—a pejorative expression to designate Germans—and interpreted as the enemy’s style.3 Classicism resurged as a countermeasure to modernism because it ensured

France’s roots in the Latin origin and provided rational quality of French art against ultra- modern and chaotic German practices. The sense of nationalism and xenophobia inherent in this rappel à l’ordre in the 1920s was amplified after the Depression started to affect France in 1931, which was slightly later than the other European countries. France welcomed immigrants in the 1920s to boost its weakening society, compensating for the workforce lost in the First World War. However, the waning economy after the Depression and the socio- political turmoil in Europe in the mid-1930s encouraged hostility against exiles and immigrants, which instigated an increasingly aggressive insistence on the national style of

French art.

2 Quentin Bajac, “Paris à la découverte de la photographie moderne, 1929-1939” in Voici Paris: Modernités photographiques , 1920-1950 (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2012), 28, and Dominique Baqué, Les Documents de la modernité: Anthologie de textes sur la photographie de 1919 à 1939 (Paris: Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 1993), 438-440.

3 Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925 (Lodon : Thames and Hudson, 1989).

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Frenchness in art was defined in distinction with foreigners’ art, which was often judged to lack the necessary artistic past and sense of measurement. For instance, Georges

Rivière explains in his essay “Avons-nous encore un art français?” (Do We Still Have a

French Art?) (1930) that “we are suffering from the pressure of a foreign invasion without artistic past, without an aesthetic and, to put it bluntly, truly barbarian in nature, originating from Africa as well as from Asia. This is something new.”4 Opposing such chaotic practices of étrangers, artists and critics in France emphasized the sense of measurement and balance realized by French reason and métier. With its implication of discipline and roots in artisanal training and craftsmanship, métier was thought to secure the superior quality of French art.

This intensification of xenophobia was particularly strong in the photography business because étrangers from Germany and Eastern and Central Europe, who had introduced the

New Photography in the 1920s, dominated the French photographic scene.5 The formation of a group of French photographers, the Association des photographes, illustrateurs, et publicitaires français, in 1936 is a direct reflection of this situation. Better known as Le

Rectangle, this group was formed by ten French photographers, including Emmanuel Sougez,

Pierre Adam, René Servant, and Pierre Jahan.6 Le Rectangle’s establishment was motivated by an urge to resist the dominance of étrangers, as well as French indifference in photography.

4 Georges Rivière, “Avnos-nous encore un art français?,” L'Art vivant (October 15 1930): 721. “Nous subissons au contraire, la pression d'une invasion étrangère sans passé artistique, sans esthétique, et à vrai dire purement barbare, venue aussi bien de l'Afrique que de l'Asie. C'est quelque chose de nouveau.” English translation is from Romy Golan, Modernity & Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France Between the Wars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 89.

5 Clément Chéroux, “Du Cosmopolitisme en photographie: Portrait de Paris en échangeur culturel” in Voici Paris, ed. Bajac, 30-41. Chéroux summarizes the demographic change brought by migrating photographers throughout the interwar period according to socio-political contexts.

6 Original members include Pierre Adam, Marcel Arthaud, Serge Boiron, Louis Caillaud, Yvonne Chevalier, André Garban, Pierre Jahan, Henri Lacheroy, Gaston Paris, Jean Roublier, René Servant, Sougez, and Philippe Pottier. Marcel Bovis and René-Jacques later joined the group. For details of the group and their statements, see

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In the group’s manifesto published in 1938, its leader, Sougez, laments the status quo of French photography:

In this country that actually owns photography, it has been looked to be foreign for a long time since it was, by chance, given consideration. The fact that photography may be exercised by amateurs as a pastime is not indeed without contribution to the current state of affairs. But the most certain cause for this wrong position is due, above all, to the acceptance of this inventions by other peoples who filled photography with confidence and credit while we have ridiculed it by not knowing that it was an absurd judgment.7

Sougez points out Germany and neighboring counties in Central Europe first successfully advanced photography by establishing factories for the related products and schools, which affected recent French photographic scenes that became dependent on these étrangers. In addition, he believes this difference of passion and efforts produced the “bad” contemporary situation. Sougez argues that étrangers took advantage of the lack of interest in photography in France, describing them in strongly xenophobic terms:

Taking this circumstances in profit, the practitioners of all kinds of hair, and ah!, of all kinds of values, “descended” upon France, upon Paris especially, with their arsenal and appetite, and imposed more directly an illegitimate supremacy in shocking and suffocating our poor good men without courage, and took an undue place among them.8

Dominique Baqué, “C. Une photographie ‘à la française’: Emmanuel Sougez, Rémy Duval, le groupe Rectangle” in Les Documénts de la modernité, 438-450.

7 Emmanuel Sougez, “Le Rectangle,” Photo-Illustrations 33 (June 1938): 4. “Dans ce pays qui est le sien, elle fait depuis trop longtemps figure d’étrangère lorsque, d’aventure, on lui concède quelque considération. Le fait que la photographie peut être exercée comme distraction par des amateurs, n’est certes pas sans contribuer à cet état de choses. Mais la cause de la plus certaine de cette position fausse est due, surtout, à l’accueil que reçut cette invention chez d’autre peoples qui la comblèrent de confiance et de crédit tandis que nous la ridiculisions par on ne sait quels absurdes jugements.”

8 Ibid. “Mettant ces circonstances à profit, des praticiens de tout poil et, hélas ! de toute valeur, sont ‘descendus’ en France, à Paris surtout, avec leur arsenal et leurs appétits et ont imposé plus directement une suprématie illégitime, bousculant, étouffant nos pauvres bonshommes sans hardiesse, prenant parmi eux une place indue.”

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He declares that Le Rectangle encouraged French photographers to take action against this situation with a disciplined métier that was supposedly absent in these outsiders’ works.

The name Le Rectangle, coined by Pierre Adam, not only refers to the shape of the camera, photographic plates, and prints, but also evokes ideas of regularity, harmony, rigor, and discipline. The manifesto continues:

This new organization prevents the speculation of improvised photographers. Photography is a complex and delicate métier, that requires knowledge and long experience. It can be exercised honorably only after years of practices, with the contests of quality, some of which are innate, of material precision and of profound understanding of its utilitarian applications.9

The themes seen in the manifesto of Le Rectangle—namely antipathy and intolerance against foreigners, accusation of their lack of discipline, and insistence on French métier as a countermeasure—were emblematic of critical art discourses after the Depression. This overlap thus legitimizes the interpretation of the rise of conservative photography as a movement parallel to contemporary rappel à l’ordre in other fields of art.

In the interwar period, this insistence on photography à la française corresponded to the centenary of the medium’s invention by two Frenchmen, Nicéphore Niépce and Louis

Daguerre, which led to the insistence on photography as French national heritage and property.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, there were a number of commemorative exhibitions and events, which concluded with a ceremony at the Sorbonne in 1939. Magazines, including Jazz,

VU, and L’Art vivant, frequently reproduced historical photographs by Daguerre, Nadar, and other nineteenth century French photographers. Photographie 1930 also printed works by these historical photographers (fig. 2-28) reflecting the contemporary celebratory atmosphere.

9 Ibid. “Cette nouvelle organisation prévient les spéculations de photographes improvisés. La photographie est un métier complexe et délicat, qui exige savoir et longue expérience. Il ne peut s’exercer honorablement qu’après des années de pratique, avec le concours de qualités dont certaines sont innées, d’un matériel précis et d’une connaissance approfondie de ses applications ultérieures.”

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Since France’s presence in and contributions to the development of modern photography were entirely undermined, as Sougez observes, French photographers represented by Le Rectangle aspired to propose photography à la française and to restore their influence on the international photographic scene. The rise of conservative photographic tendencies and their reliance on the country’s artistic tradition has been treated by previous literature as a manifestation of the French national style.10

Since Arts et métiers graphiques’ mission was to internationally promote “French art,” one may suppose that the same nationalist attitude based on xenophobia directly caused

Photographie’s return to conservatism. Photographie did dedicate a considerable number of pages to the members of Le Rectangle in the mid-to late 1930s. Among others, Sougez, the leading figure of the group, was one of the best represented photographers in the annual.

Nonetheless, although it was “French” in principle, publications of Editions Arts et Métiers

Graphiques were never politically aggressive or xenophobic. Antipathy for étrangers never manifested in Arts et métiers graphiques and its publications. Despite embracing French creativity based on the sense of measurement and superior métier throughout its existence, the magazine remained cosmopolitan regardless of the contemporary socio-political context.

Therefore, the frequent featuring of Le Rectangle members was a natural consequence of their growing presence in the French photographic scene, not of their political stance. In fact,

Photographie became increasingly international throughout the 1930s. Whereas the first album in 1930 only featured photographers of France, Germany, and the United States,

Photographie 1935 contained submissions from twelve countries, including Germany, Eastern and Central Europe, and even Japan, China, and India. Furthermore, Editions Arts et Métiers

10 See note 2.

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Graphiques remained almost intact despite the declining economy following the Depression.

Deberny et Peignot typefoundry suffered significantly because of the rising price of lead, an essential material for the manufacturing of typefaces. However, since Arts et métiers graphiques was financially independent, the magazine and its publications retained the same luxurious quality that had been its main appeal since the pre-Depression period.

In this regard, xenophobia does not sufficiently explain the situation surrounding

Photographie and the French photographic scene in the mid-1930s. I argue that the cosmopolitan and inclusive attitude of Arts et métiers graphiques represents another typical manifestation of French nationalism: universalism. As the country, especially its capital Paris, had attracted foreign artists for several centuries, it was located at the crossroad of cultural exchange. The influence and presence of étrangers was thus inevitable in France. To positively account for this situation, interwar critics and art historians, such as Henri Focillon,

Germain Bazin, and Louis Gillet, developed a rhetoric to define France and French art as a repository for outside influence. French art tempered radical elements through its quality of reason and measurement: France absorbed everything and assimilated it thanks to the universality of its art and culture.

As the art historian James Herbert beautifully discusses, the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, and its related events, clearly represented this attitude.11 The newly constructed Palais de

Chaillot on the hill of Trocadéro embodied French universalism in its shape and location. The

Palais featured two outstretched wings shaped to form a wide arc. These building units encircled the Jardin du Trocadéro below, where the pavilions of participating countries were located. This disposition of the French architecture and the Fair’s section étrangère

11 James D. Herbert, Paris 1937: Worlds on Exhibition (Ithaca: Cornell Univestiy Press, 1998).

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symbolically represented France’s assimilatory capacity and universalism. The vista from the

Palais further enforced this nationalistic program. From the hill, the view of the section

étrangère below was bordered by the Eiffel Tower standing afar on the Champs de Mars. The two monuments—the one specifically constructed for this fair, and the other for the past one in 1889—thus both literary and symbolically overshadowed the foreign pavilions as if France gently but steadily dominated them.

Likewise, an exhibition held at the Musée des arts modernes on Quai de Tokyo, Chefs- d’œuvres de l’art français, offered a complete historical narrative of French art with more than 1,300 paintings, sculptures, objects d’art, and tapestries from the Roman period through the late nineteenth century. This exhibition aimed to present the universality of French art, emphasizing its inclusiveness of artistic genres and tendencies, as well as the maintenance of its quality throughout its long history. Critics and art historians emphasized the continuity of

French art since antiquity and promoted its nationalistic understanding, which absorbed everything that came to the French land. Focusing on the painters imported to Fontainebleau in the sixteenth century, Germain Bazin generalizes the assimilation of foreign influence as the principal trait of French art: “France attracted the most talented painters from foreign lands, yet by one of the most surprising phenomena in the history of art, one that attests to the power of its genius, France “Gallicized” them completely. . . . Are not the formal characteristics of all this painting executed by foreigners themselves French?”12

Another exhibition at Petit Palais, Les Maîtres de l’art indépendent, organized by

Raymond Escholier, was a more direct demonstration of the “Gallicization” of outside influence. This exhibition provided the first occasion in which works by Cubists and foreign

12 Germain Bazin, “Du XIIe au XVIe siècle,” in René Huyghe ed., Cent trent chefs-d’œuvre de l’art français (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937), 15. Quoted in Hebert, Paris 1937, 111.

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artists of Ecole de Paris were officially displayed in the public art museum in France. These two tendencies were the principle target of nationalistic attacks in the rappel à l’ordre. While the former was dismissed as the enemy’s style in the 1920s, the latter represented the chaos created by étrangers in the country’s capital. However, by the time this exhibition was organized, both trends had established international reputations as Parisian art movements.

Exhibiting these works in a French museum symbolically acknowledged their contribution to the development of French art and represented their assimilation into the institutional framework.

Even before this World’s Fair, Arts et métiers graphiques had embraced universalism from its first declaration of purpose: “By its universality, by the high literary quality that will be provided by the eminent collaborators with whom the magazine intends to associate itself,

“Arts et Métiers Graphiques” will quickly impose itself in the entire world, and will effectively serve the cause of French culture and art.”13 It is also suggestive that Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques printed accompanying publications to the two exhibitions in 1937 mentioned before: Cent trente chefs-d’œuvres de l’art française edited by René Huyghe and the catalogue of the Petit Palais show. This principle of universalism, embodied in the editorial stance of Arts et métiers graphiques and Photographie, will revise the previous approach to photography’s conservatism in the mid-1930s. While xenophobia certainly was a crucial element determining the French photographic scene in this period, universalism and the assimilatory rhetoric were also essential, thus need to be taken into account.

13 The Statute of Arts et métiers graphiques, Fonds Peignot, XI, Programme de Arts et métiers graphiques. Bibliothèque Forney, Paris. "Par son universalité, par la haute tenue littéraire que lui assureront les collaborateurs éminents dont elle veut s'entourer, la revue "Arts et Métiers Graphiques" s'imposera rapidement dans le monde entier, et servira efficacement la cause de la culture et de l'art française."

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A “Belated” and “Mixed” Phenomenon

After being coined by Jean Cocteau in 1926, the expression rappel à l’ordre has been generally employed to describe interwar French art. However, the condition of rappel à l’ordre in photography is distinct from the phenomenon in other fields of art, especially in painting. To reconsider the uniqueness of photography’s rappel à l’ordre and revise the schematic understanding as a simple shift from modernism to conservatism, it is essential to redefine this phenomenon in contradistinction with that in painting.

First, photography’s rappel à l’ordre was a belated event. While other fields of art saw a revival of traditionalism as early as the 1920s, photography experienced it in the 1930s because the introduction of modernist photography itself occurred late. When painters felt a strong urge to correct modernist approaches in the beginning of the 1920s, photographers in

France were still bound by Pictorialism. The advent of the New Photography occurred around

1930, as is represented by the first Photographie. Because modernism was enthusiastically welcomed as a liberation from the stagnation caused by Pictorialism’s persistence, the sense of euphoria dominated photography until the early 1930s. This optimism about the new tendency prevented the contemporary cultural conservatism from immediately affecting photography.

It is notable that modernist photography was welcomed in France in the middle of the cultural backdrop of the retour à l’homme and a “second” machine age after the Depression.

During this period, mechanization and industrialization were considered a threat to humanity.

A number of authors voiced their pessimistic world views on the mechanized, soulless society in this period. These views were shared by the two most important intellectuals of the day,

Paul Valéry in his Regards sur le monde actuel (1931) and Henri Bergson in his Les Deux

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sources de la morale et de la religion (1932). Bergson explains that the machine was beneficial for man’s material needs, but his soul had not kept up with its progress. Ascribing the Depression to the growing discrepancy between technology and soul, he argues for a simpler and healthier life in which humans regenerate their spirituality.14

Likewise, Le Corbusier offers a similar vision, making a clear distinction between a

“first” and “second” machine age. His projects in the 1920s and 1930s clearly reflect the changing relationship between man and technology.15 In the 1920s, he expressed enthusiasm and optimism toward machine aesthetics as a driving force for reconstruction after the war.

His notorious Plan voisin, proposed in 1925, was an emblematic project of his euphoria about the rise of machines; he dreamt of a complex of skyscrapers where people lived far above the ground. However, in the 1930s, he declared a return to the soil: “Standard man has retrieved his standard: the soil. Man stands again on the soil, he treads it with his feet . . . we have ceased to be animals trapped in a desert stone.”16 His town plan of La Ville radieuse in 1934 was designed to return to the basics and essence of man through harmonized organic growth and mechanical elements. In this anti-modernist and anti-mechanization post-Depression climate, better management of machines, and man’s control over them, became an important mission.

Considering this general cultural background, modern photography, which essentially relied on the mechanical specificity of the medium, arrived in a culture that should have

14 Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 87.

15 Le Corbusier, “Spectacle de la vie moderne,” Plans 13 (March 1932): 37-48.

16 Le Corbusier, “Mort dans la rue,” Plans 5 (May 1931): 65. “L’homme standard a retrouvé son standard, la terre. L’homme est de nouveau sur la terre, il foule la terre de son pied. Nous avons cessé d’être des bêtes traquées dans un désert de pierre.” English translation from Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 76.

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repelled and rejected it. The embrace of modernist photography in this context conversely testifies to the initial expectation and optimism for the advent of the New Photography as revelation and liberation from the stagnation of art photography.

The belatedness of photography’s rappel à l’ordre led to its second characteristics: mixture of styles. Painting’s rappel à l’ordre had two distinct stages. As Romy Golan examines, this cultural phenomenon involved more than one ideological backdrop depending on the date and environment and also had various ways of expressions.17 The first wave of rappel à l’ordre occurred during the 1910s and 1920s. It was principally characterized by the revival of classicism based on the criticism against pre-war avant-garde. After the Depression, its second wave concerned more on naturalism inspired by the rise of French nationalism and its reliance on the French soil.

Conservatism in photography in the mid-1930s has much in common with contemporary painting in its return to naturalism and embrace of France. One of the most frequent and popular subjects of this period in Photographie was landscape. French photographers, like Duval, Pierre Boucher, Roger Parry, and Jean Moral, and naturalized

étrangers, including Nora Dumas, frequently captured provincial sceneries in the French countryside and French people engaging in agriculture (fig. 3-8). These scenes paralleled terriens artists represented by André Denoyer de Segonzac, a conservative French painter who embodied the contemporary retour à la terre18 and who actively depicted the French soil and bucolic landscapes in the early 1930s. Based on the resistance to mechanization after the

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., especially, “2 Rusticizing the Modern,” 23-60.

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Depression, as well as the growth of chauvinism, French provinces gained a renewed interest and significance in this period.

However, in addition to villages, families in the countryside, and provincial scenes of the retour à la terre, photography in this period also involved classicism. Duval’s Ingresque nude photograph (fig. 3-7) is a telling example. Classicism was associated with the first wave of the rappel à l'ordre in art that occurred during and immediately after World War I and should be distinguished from the increase of terrien artists and their works after the

Depression. These two currents may be synthesized under the useful expression rappel à l’ordre but were, in reality, distinct phenomena with different sets of ideas and backgrounds.

However, photography’s rappel à l’ordre in the mid-1930s exhibited a combination of these two tendencies. Since photography was a “belated” cultural phenomenon, it went through an intense transformation in a short time. The “mixed” nature of the works in the mid-1930s proves that photography’s rappel à l’ordre cannot be simply explained by a parallel with other fields of art; we must analyze specific contexts surrounding the medium.

Toward a Subjective Objectif

Connecting to the Société Française de Photographie

The condensed and mixed nature of the “belated” rappel à l’ordre in photography requires a revision of “modern” and “conservative” in the French photographic scene. Since

Photographie has been treated as a herald of modernism, Arts et méiters graphiques has been casually posited as the opposite of the conservative Société française de photographie, the country’s largest organ for photography promotion, in which Pictorialism survived far into the

1920s. This schematic dichotomy started to dissolve in the mid-1930s. In the late 1920s, the

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SFP, established in 1854, was a frequent target of modernists’ attack and considered the epitome of the belatedness of French photography. Advocates of modernism often counterposed themselves against the organization to assert their progressive position. For instance, the SFP’s annual exhibition, Salon international d’art photographique, had been a venerable institution for photography exhibitions since 1894 and kept displaying works by

French Pictorialists, such as Robert Demachy and Constant Puyo. The first exhibition of modernist photography in France, salon de l’éscalier in 1928, which included Man Ray,

Berenice Abbott, Germaine Krull, and Tabard, was named Premier Salon indépendant de la photographie moderne. This title is certainly modeled on the Salon des Indépendants of painting started in 1884 in response to the official state-sponsored salon exhibition. This reference to the past independent exhibition attests that the organizers of salon de l’escalier intended to criticize photography’s established institution and its stagnation represented by the

SFP’s official exhibition.

Likewise, Photographie was treated as the opposite of the SFP when its first issue was published in 1930. Daniel Maslet described the album as “a bomb” that “demolished, in a few blows, the old art photography that had been dying since 1914.”19 However, this opposition was no longer valid by the time Photographie 1935 was published. Because of the album’s emphasis on the medium’s aesthetics, Photographie came increasingly closer to the SFP in the course of the early 1930s by publishing texts written by a SFP’s member, F. de Lanot.

This association became definitive when Peignot was invited to be a juror for the twenty-ninth

Salon international d'art photographique in 1934. In fact, Photographie 1935 reflected this

19 Lucien Lorelle, “Entretien avec Daniel Masclet,” La Photographe 750 (August 24, 1951): 287. This volume “fit l’effet d’une bombe dans les milieux artistiques de ce temps-là. Il démolit en quelques rounds la vieille photographie d’art, moribonde depuis 1914.”

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collaboration by reproducing many of the pictures exhibited in the same show. Approximately one-third of this issue had initially been displayed in the show. Sougez, who was also a SFP member, explained that AMG and SFP constituted “the two principal currents” of the French photographic world and they were united at last in this salon.20

This unification proves that the mainstream French photographic scene became truly eclectic. This does not simply mean that Photographie became more conservative but also indicates that the SFP did not exclusively advocate Pictorialist art photography. Though the

SFP was strongly associated with Pictorialism, it actually accepted some modernist tendencies, especially the New Objectivity and featured works by Albert Renger-Patzsch (fig. 3-9), as early as 1927. The organization’s 1927 salon displayed the German photographer’s works capturing hands working on a potter’s wheel, which demonstrates his photographic expression purely based on the camera’s objectivity. The catalogue of this show reproduces this picture alongside typical art photography with blurry Impressionist surface effects by Demachy and the SFP’s vice-president Claude de Santeuil (fig. 2-10). The SFP was thus not a truly retrograde organization but assimilated modernist works in conditions that manifested the photographer’s technical perfection and aesthetic quality. This stance was close to that of

Peignot and Photographie, which repelled truly radical, shocking, and vernacular expressions as I have demonstrated in chapter 2.

20 Emmanuel Sougez, “Le XXIXe Salon intertnational d'art photographiques 1934,” Bulletin de la Société française de photographie et cinématographie 9 (September 1934): 183. Despite Sougez’s attitude to consider the SFP as one of the main organs of photography in France, both the salon and society were on the decline in the 1930s due largely to the rise of modern photography, as Françoise Denoyelle points out. The number of its members significantly decreased and its deluxe salon catalogs with heliogravure prints remained largely unsold. Peignot’s approach was to reinvigorate the group and salon. See Françoise Denoyelle, “Une étape de décline,” Etudes photographiques 4 (May 1998), http://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/159.

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This connection with the SFP significantly influenced the textual content of the following issues of Photographie. In addition to front matter essays written by prominent independent critics and writers, including Waldemar George, Philippe Soupault, Georges

Hilaire, and Louis Chéronnet, Photographie also included back matter articles beginning in

1931. While the former introduced theoretical debates on the ontology of photography, the latter provided reports and critiques on the content of each album, as well as on contemporary exhibitions and events. From Photographie 1935, these back matter features were entrusted to the members of the SFP, especially Jean Vétheuil, Robert Auvillain, and René Servant. These critics determined the stance on photography in the publications of Editions Arts et Métiers

Graphiques in the mid-to late 1930s.

Against the Profusion of “Bizarre” Subjects and “Tricks”

Both AMG and SFP shared a critical attitude toward the over-saturation of modernist expressions in mass media, which became the primary reason for the emergence of conservatism. By the early 1930s, photography had widely expanded into the everyday visual landscape in France. In 1933, French critic J. E. Pouterman wrote in Arts et métiers graphiques 36 that photography had been “powerfully introduced almost everywhere in the last few years—in publicity as in illustration for books, in journalism as in decoration.”21 The

New Photography was fully integrated into graphic practices and permeated almost all kinds of printed matter, from the traditional field of bookmaking to modern publicity design and the illustrated press. In particular, the typical visual idioms of the New Photography—angled

21 J.E. Pouterman, “Exposition photographique à la galerie de la Pléïade,” Arts et métiers graphiques 36 (July, 1933): 52. “La photographie qui depuis quelques années s'est introduite avec force un peu partout—dans la publicité aussi bien que dans l'illustration des livres, dans le journalisme comme dans la décoration.”

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views in plongée and contre-plongée, close-ups, photomontages, and other experimental techniques—were actively employed to catch people’s attention. Photography’s shift to conservatism first occurred as a critical reaction against this situation.

Duval succinctly summarized this change. He was arguably the closest photographer to Peignot, working not only as an in-house photographer of Studio Deberny et Peignot but also as one of the most prolific photography critics in Arts et métiers graphiques. He was later appointed as a secretary of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine organized by Peignot in 1936 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. Duval was also personally close to the Peignot family; in 1938, when Charles’s sister, Colette Peignot, died, Duval took her death portraits.22 Considering this relationship, Duval was the photographer of Arts et métiers graphiques and his writings exemplify its stance on the medium.

In 1935, Duval summarized recent changes in photography:

It was necessary to get rid of useless virtuosities, irritating camera angles, and mechanical tricks in order to reach a period that is simpler, more measured, and more sensitive. . . . We prefer, once again, the grace of a tree in Ile-de-France to the ugliness of the zone, and to the ephemeral beauty of an automobile chassis. We turn to a psychological portrait, a balanced landscape.23

Here, Duval targets two specific aspects of modernism: the use of strange subjects and the lack of technical perfection. This passage represents a typical critical attitude toward modernism in mid-1930s France. For instance, in an essay written for Photographie 1935,

“Considération sur l'évolution de la photographie” (Consideration of the Evolution of

22 Rémy Duval, “Photos: lit de mort,” Box 4, Folder 6, Fonds Colette Peignot, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

23 Rémy Duval, “Pierre Boucher,” Arts et métiers graphiques 49 (October 1935): 46. “Il fallait se débarrasser des virtuosités inutiles, des prises de vues irritantes, des truquages mécaniques pour atteindre une période plus simple, plus mesurée, plus sensible. . . . On préfère encore la grâce d'un arbre de Ile-de-France aux laideurs de la zone, à l'éphémère beauté d'un châssis d'autos. On se tourne vers le portrait psychologique, le paysage équilibré.”

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Photography), Vétheuil insists that the growing demand for images in the field of publicity design and the Surrealists’ exploitation of the medium for subversive purposes initiated “the abundance of bizarre subjects, curious angles, and ‘laboratory’ research that aimed to surprise rather than seduce.”24 Practitioners of the New Vision and Surrealism photographed unconventional motifs that had previously been overlooked, such as bits of machine parts, dusty corners of a city street, or a slaughterhouse. In particular, Surrealists dealt with photography as raw documentary material and exploited its ability to reproduce reality to achieve uncanny effects.25 This attitude was conspicuously seen in Documents edited by

Georges Bataille (who was once a lover of Peignot’s sister Colette). The famous photographs of Big Toe (fig. 3-10) and a flypaper by Jacques André Boiffard exemplify how debasement of art was embraced in the magazine. Not limited to the periodicals of the movement, photographs by Surrealists and their indirect associates were also employed in popular illustrated weeklies like VU. Eli Lotar’s pictures of La Villette slaughterhouse (fig. 2-30), originally featured in the signature column of Documents, “Dictionnaire,” in 1930, were reproduced as a reportage in 1931 on the pages of this illustrated magazine. These “bizarre” subjects became stylized and proliferated by the early 1930s in publicity works, created sometimes by those directly associated with these art movements and sometimes by second-

24 Jean Vétheuil, “Considération sur l'évolution de la photographie” in Photographie 1935 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1934), 121. “[U]ne abondance de sujets bizarres, d’angles curieux, de recherches de ‘laboratoire' qui cherchaient à étonner plus qu’à séduire.”

25 For Surrealist photography, see, for instance, Rosalind Krauss. Rosalind Krauss, “Corpus Delicti,” October 33 (Summer 1985): 31-72; Krauss, “The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism,” October 19 (Winter 1981): 3–34; Krauss, ed., L’Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985); Dawn Ades, ed., Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006); and Quentin Bajac and Clément Chéroux, eds. La Subversion des images: Surréalisme, photographie, film (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2009).

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rate professional photographers. The critiques by Duval and Vétheuil were reactions against this situation.

In addition to subject selection, critics denounced the experimental techniques as mere truquage (tricks) that aimed to surprise people and mask the photographers’ technical shortcomings. For instance, Maximilien Vox stated the excess of experimentation in publicity shots was trouvaille, or randomly and luckily found things and objects. He regarded this aspect as an inherent general deficit and potential risk of all experimental techniques:

The “trouvaille” do not recur; photographs from skewed angles, monuments that one photographs lying on one’s back, grand-guignolesque expressionism, the cheap fantastic effect of double exposure, backlighting called “night effects,” the materialism of a close-up of the edge of a trashcan—all of this is amusing and stimulating upon first contact, but less so by the tenth time, and by the hundredth time, it gives the impression of “outdated modernism,” analogous to suffocation.26

Taking photomontage as the prime example of trouvaille, Vox criticizes the lack of control and measurement in its contemporary uses in publicity designs. Vox admits the method’s revolutionary nature, describing the technique as “Christopher Columbus” in photography, but warns “you must not abuse it.”27 He laments that this practice was trapped in

“decadence” with increasing numbers of inappropriate applications once it became available to anyone who had access to photography. He especially criticizes young practitioners, whom he calls “uncivilized young barbarians,” who began “engaging in the most appalling excesses” of photomontage:

26 Maximilien Vox, “Le Photomontage,” Photo-ciné-graphie 16 (June 1934): 10. “Les 'trouvailles' ne se répètent pas; la photo de guingois, les monuments que l'on prend couché sur le dos, l'expressionisme grand-guignolesque, le fantastique à bon marché de la surimpression, les contre-jours baptisés 'effets de nuit,' le matérialisme du coin de poubelle en gros plan, tout cela, qui est amusant et stimulant au premier contact, l'est moins au dixième, et, au centième, donne une impression de “moderne périmé”, analogue à l'asphyxie.”

27 Ibid., 8. “Le 'photomontage' est une bonne chose, mais il ne faut pas en abuser.”

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It [photomontage] became an excessively easy way to publicize (or think you were publicizing) a product by randomly cutting a bunch of landscapes, human figures, and interior views, and crudely gluing them as the background for a close-up image or a human figure. . . . This lack of care and polish—let's just come out and say it: of technical awareness—is our bad habit.28

As a result of the increased use of similar critiques, the boom in experimental techniques and new subjects in France faded into the mainstream photographic community in France just a few years after its initial flourish.

In place of excessive formalism and experimentation, conservative critics began to insist that photographers return to realism based on the penetrating gaze of the camera and masterly picture-making. Duval emphasized that photography’s ultimate purpose should be to

“make one see things anew, make one see as if he/she has never seen.”29 He categorically distinguished this idea from the modernist’s shocking and eye-opening visual experiences:

I do not mean by this that portraits should have their heads upside down. I do not mean that it is sufficient, in order to make an original work, to “capture” a bit of string, a nail, a reflection on water, an amusing shadow, or half of an eye. But by placing these ordinary objects or daily landscapes under unfamiliar lighting, then arranging them on the page in a distinctive way, one will be able to give birth to them anew, thanks to the lens that possesses the power of intense penetration.30

28Ibid. “Il commença, en jeune barbare mal policé, par commettre les plus épouvantables excès. Il devint d’une facilité excessive de faire (ou de croire faire) la publicité d'un produit en découpant pêle-mêle une foule de paysages, de personnages et de vues d'intérieur, et de les coller sommairement comme fonds d’un gros plan ou d'une figure. . . . ce manque de soin, de fini —disons le tout à trac: de conscience technique—qui est notre péché mignon.”

29 Rémy Duval, “La photographie: Nouveau mode d'expression,” Photo-ciné-graphie 16 (June 1934): 1. “Faire voir à nouveau, faire voir comme si l'on avait jamais vu.”

30 Ibid. “Je ne veux pas dire par là que les portraits doivent avoir la tête en bas. Je ne veux pas dire qu'il suffit, pour faire une œuvre originale, de “prendre” un bout de ficelle, un clou, un reflet dans l'eau, une ombre amusante, ou une moitié d'œil, mais un homme plaçant ces humbles objets ou ces paysages quotidiens sous un éclairage inhabituel, les disposant ensuite sur la page d'une manière caractéristique, pourra de nouveau les mettre au monde, grâce à l'objectif qui possède une force de pénétration intense.”

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The criticism developed by these French writers creates a parallel between the French photographic scene in the mid-1930s and the German scene in the late 1920s. The French critique of modernism curiously reiterated the accusation of the New Vision posed by those associated with the New Objectivity, especially Renger-Patzsch. In the wake of Film und Foto in 1929, photographers of the New Objectivity severely criticized the exponential increase of photographic images and the abuse of experimental techniques initiated by the New Vision as

“photo-inflation.”31 Renger-Patzsch attacked this situation in qualitative terms in a manner similar to French critics in the mid-1930s. Toward the end of the 1920s, Renger-Patzsch published a series of critiques on the New Vision’s experimentation. An essay co-authored with the Hungarian critic Ernst Kallai, “Postscript for Photo-Inflation/Photo boom” represents his basic critical stance against photographic modernism. Describing the recent profusion of photography in society, Renger-Patzsch and Kallai criticized the decline of quality: “in the fashionable photograph—with a few exceptions—affectation and craving for originality are coupled with a lack of aesthetic standards and of craft.” Treating “the Stuttgart exhibition”

(Film und Foto) as the ultimate example, they denounced this qualitative shortcoming and undoubtedly influenced Vox’s word choice when speaking of “tricks”:

The recipe for success: shoot from above or below. Enormous enlargements or reductions, the trashcan as the most satisfying motif. Send negative prints to the press, the monster eats everything. (Motive: new, interesting visual effects.) Take pictures at night, underexposure has the most interesting effects. And then: let chance work for you, it’ll do the job. That's how modern photos are made.32

31 Olivier Lugon, “'Photo-inflation': Image Profusion in German Photography, 1925-1945,” History of Photography 32 (vol.3, May 2008): 219-234. Lugon discussed the control of this “inflation” from a quantitative point of view by taking August Sander as an example. Sander took a quantitative approach to regulate this chaos by introducing ideas of serial production and the archive.

32 Ernö Kallai and Albert Renger-Patzsch, “Postscript to Photo-Inflation/Boom Times,” Bauhaus 3 (no.4, October-December, 1929): 20. English translation from Christopher Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940 (New York: Aperture), 141.

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By sharing Renger-Patzsch’s critical position against “photo-inflation,” photographers and critics in France in the mid-1930s started to agree with the New Objectivity, especially its embrace of photography’s realism and perfection of craft. Although Le Rectangle and nationalistic photographers insisted on French métier, the idea of technical and professional mastery was also shared with Germans.

Assimilation of German New Objectivity

An analysis of the reception of an understudied German photographer, Hein Gorny

(1904-1967), in Photographie provides an important case study for the assimilation of the

New Objectivity and of outside influence in general. Photographie 1935 marked a watershed for the rise of conservatism in the annual. Among the eighty-three photographers featured in the album, Gorny was best represented, with five works. Although his name has almost been forgotten in today’s history of photography, he was renowned as a young protagonist of the

New Objectivity in Germany in the early 1930s.33 After starting his professional career in

1929, he worked principally in Hanover, where he became acquainted with and befriended contemporary artists and progressive photographers. Most importantly, Renger-Patzsch was his close friend and mentor. A photograph of Gorny and his wife taken by Renger-Patzsch

(fig. 3-11) shows the couple in an intimate and relaxed mood, which attests to the closeness of

Gorny and the master photographer of the New Objectivity. The latter significantly influenced

33 His publicity photograph Untitled (Collars) (1928) is reproduced in two seminal articles: Abigail Solomon- Godeau, “The Armed Vision Disarmed: Radical Formalism from Weapon to Style” in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. Richard Bolton (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), 92, and Rosalind Krauss, “Picasso/Pastiche” in The Picasso Papers (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 1998), 129. However, neither author discusses Gorny’s work in detail.

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the former. A 1930 winter forest landscape by Gorny (fig. 3-12) strongly resembles a plate included in Regner-Patzsch’s Die Welt ist schön (fig. 3-13). This imitative act demonstrates that Gorny attempted to absorb his forerunner’s keen sense of photographic realism and the formal beauty realized in a sophisticated composition rhythmically accentuated by the contrast of black and white. Having quickly established his reputation as a promising photographer in the city of Hanover, Gorny became known in Germany via print media, including Das deutsche Lichtbild, in which he made his debut in 1932.

Although he did not receive any significant international exposure before 1932, Peignot was quick to recognize this young talent and published Gorny’s work in Photographie 1932, almost simultaneously with the German album (fig. 3-14). Gorny’s first work in Photographie, capturing a maize, represents the typical qualities of the New Objectivity, with its sharp focus, highlighting the materiality, surface texture, and objectiveness of the photographed motif.

While his debut in the annual in 1932 was limited to this single work, Gorny’s pictures continued to consistently appear in the album until its penultimate issue, Photographie 1939

(published in 1938). In total, twenty-nine of his photographs were reproduced in seven volumes of Photographie (1932, 1933-34, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, and 1939), making him the most frequently featured individual in the publication’s history.34 In addition to the editors’ selections and recommendations from their professional and personal contacts, Photographie accepted submissions from individual photographers, which made it an international “who’s

34 I limit my analysis to the interwar period alone in this chapter. If I include the works that appeared in Photographie 1947—a post-World War II attempt to restart the annual—the total number of Sougez’s works becomes twenty-nine and matches that of Gorny, since the latter did not participate in this post-war issue of the album. It is a question why the album focused so much on Gorny while almost ignoring his mentor Renger- Patzsch, who is only represented by a handful of works in the album’s earlier issues. This point requires further research and a separate discussion.

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who”35 of the medium’s contemporary practitioners. As such, it reproduced more than 1,200 photographs by approximately 380 photographers and photo agencies around the world in its ten-year existence. Given that each participant averaged three to four works, the number of

Gorny’s works is extraordinary and testifies to Peignot and Photographie’s editorial staff championing this German photographer.36 Thus, the annual was by no means xenophobic in its editorial stance.

The way Gorny’s works were selected and evaluated in Photographie reveals how the reception of modernism changed in the 1930s. Despite the outstanding number of featured works, Photographie displayed only limited aspects of Gorny’s œuvre by omitting his modernist works and publicity shots. In the 1930s, Gorny produced a considerable number of photographs of machines, factories, and industrial products for his commercial commissions.

Among other clients, he provided images for two Hanover-based companies with international success, Perikan and Balhsen (fig. 3-15).37 These commissioned works constituted a primary component of his output and embodied his modernist spirit, with the frequent use of extreme close-ups that highlights the materiality of the objects. In these cases, he often organized products to be advertised in a serial arrangement, which alluded to the process of mechanical and industrial production.38 Photographie almost completely ignored this aspect of his output, except for one still life arrangement of glasses that appeared late in

35 Alain Fleig, Etant donnée l'âge de la lumière II: Naisssance de la photographie comme média (Neuchâtel: Ides et Calendes, 1997), 242.

36 Gorny’s presence was especially outstanding in issue 1933-34, which reproduced eleven works by him. Throughout the existence of the annual, no other photographers were given such a considerable treatment in a single volume.

37 Marc Barbey, “Preface” in Hein Gorny: New Objectivity and Industry (Berlin: Collection Regard, 2016), 4.

38 Laura Benz, “Serial Products and Photographic Design” in Hein Gorny: New Objectivity and Industry, ed. Marc Barbey (Berlin: Collection Regard, 2015), 7.

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issue 1938 (fig. 3-16). The majority of his twenty-nine pictures in the annual concentrated on landscapes, animals, and genre scenes (fig. 3-17). This inclination toward traditionalist subjects not only reflected the mood following the “photo-inflation” in France, but also contemporary antipathy for modernism in general.

Critics evaluated these works based on the photographer’s métier, which placed Gorny within the contemporary rappel à l’ordre. In “Notes sur photo,” a short accompanying essay to Photographie 1933-34, the associate of the SFP, de Lanot, praised Gorny’s skill in capturing the delicate natural light in a picture reproduced in the album (fig. 3-18).39 De Lanot highlighted the photographer’s sensitivity to beauty people tend to overlook, such as the subtle reflection of light on water. This work also embodies Gorny’s keen sense of composition and framing based on geometry. In the picture, the pier and waves crisscross at a right angle, forming a diagonal grid pattern. This constitutes the photograph’s central compositional element, which is accentuated with a vertical line formed by the female figure standing almost in the center of the picture.

In addition to describing this sense of harmony and balance, as well as métier, de

Lanot compares another work by Gorny reproduced (fig. 3-19) in the same album to the paintings of Camille Corot: “by the delicate nature of the subject and his manner to handle it, we ask ourselves the following question: ‘Is this a Corot or a Japanese print?’”40 The picture in question frames a lake and trees in a calm atmosphere. On the left side, trees in shadow are doubled by their reflection in the water, forming a foreground image and point of focus that fixes the viewer’s gaze. The foreground’s sharp contour lines create a strong contrast with the

39 F. de Lanot, “Notes sur photo” in Photographie 1933-34 (August 25, 1933), 131.

40 Ibid. “. . . par la délicatesse du sujet et sa manière de le traiter nous a fait poser à nous-même cette question: Est-ce un Corot ou une estampe japonaise?”

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exquisite blurriness of the middle and background lit by the soft sunlight screened through the misty evaporation of water, which adds a rich but delicate gradation of black and white. This calmness and delicate gray underscore de Lanot's comparison with a Corot, the French master painter acclaimed in the late 1920s in the rise of naturalism.41 Though the reference to “a

Japanese print” provides a safe margin to keep Gorny a step away from total integration into

French aesthetics, the comparison to Corot not only places the German photographer within the contemporary artistic discourses but also assimilates him into the French context.

From Document to Témoignage

The evaluation of photographic realism’s capacity to “make one see things anew” prevailed in Photographie and Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques publications. However, critics usually connected this quality less with photography’s mechanical function than with the sensitivity of each photographer. For example, in Photographie 1935, a Hungarian photographer Erno Vadas won first place in the competition to select the best photograph in the volume (fig. 3-20).42 Critics associated with Arts et métiers graphiques unanimously acclaimed his picture of running geese, praising his masterful camera handling and his ability to faithfully capture the atmosphere and movement created by the rushing birds and the rising dust. As this work freezes fugitive elements and renders atmospheric effects, it represents the

41 Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia, 36.

42 Photographie 1935, for the first and last time in the album’s history, held a competition entitled “Referendum international de la meilleure photographie.” The readers were asked to nominate ten best works according to their preferences and to send the list to the office of Arts et métiers graphiques. The rubric for assessment stipulated that the voters should evaluate their selections on both artistic and photographical merits by giving one to ten points for four elements: “aesthetics,” “framing,” “choice of subject”, and “technique”. The result was announced in “Notes et échos,” Arts et métiers graphiques 47 (June 1935): 47. The ten top photographs were by: 1. Erno Vadas (p. 107), 2. Herbert Harris (p. 7), 3. Gilbert de Chambertrand (p. 105), 4. Kefer Dora Maar (n. 32), 5. A. Keighley (p. 21), 6. Georges Mounier (n. 40), 7. André Steiner (p. 77), 8. Imboden (p. 40), 9. François Kollar (p. 51), and 10. Juliette Lasserre (p. 52).

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photographer’s ability to “make one see things anew.” Vadas was thus regarded as the epitome of the “pure” photographer in his truthful attitude toward photography’s mechanical capacity to objectively document reality. However, when critics speak of him and other photographers, including Gorny, they attribute such quality to the photographers’ sensitivity to the overlooked. Thus, they interpret photographs based on the objective realism of the camera lens as the manifestation of the photographer’s personality. The evaluation of the subjective aspect of photographic works became the most prominent theme in the critical discourse on the medium in mid-1930s France. It is then necessary to consider on what theoretical, cultural, and photographic grounds, objective document produced by the camera come to be seen as a subjective expression.

This turn theoretically relied on the reinterpretation of document as témoignage

(witnessing). Generally speaking, the development of interwar photography was based on the reevaluation of photography’s mechanical capacity. The emphasis on the medium’s documentary principle shifted photography away from the imitation of painting exemplified by Pictorialism. This idea of photography as “document” was not a new concept in the interwar period but was a reversal of a negative term into a positive one. Since the nineteenth century, the word had been commonly employed to denounce photography as non-art.

Produced by the camera’s mechanism, a photograph was a documentary record, which made photography profitable for and a contributor to the development of modern science, medicine, and criminal justice in the nineteenth century. Since the Mission Héliographiuque, beginning in 1851, photography had been an essential tool in survey projects exploring and recording historical sites and monuments, as well as distant lands. Similarly, Francis Galton’s composite portraiture and Alphonse Bertillon’s Bertillonage exemplify photography’s use in the field of

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criminal justice, while Jean-Martin Charcot’s photographs, taken at the Salpêtrière sanatorium, are the best-known example of photography’s applications in medical research (despite these photographs being denounced as staged works today).

However, the documentary merit of photography exploited in such uses prevented it from entering the realm of art. Due to its reliance on technology and its automatic production of images, the act of photographing and the resulting pictures were deemed lacking in intellectual, poetic, and subjective qualities considered indispensable for artworks. One of the greatest detractors of photography, Charles Baudelaire, was afraid of its objective realism and its ability to mirror reality. He viewed this realism as a potentially dangerous contributor to the degradation of art because he defined artistic realism, not as the copy and reproduction of external reality, but as a reflection of the world of imagination, dream, and fantasy.

Baudelaire criticized photography for lacking such qualities and tried to confine the medium to the position of art’s “humble servant.”

The emergence of art photography was a reaction against these accusations. Starting in

Victorian England in the 1850s with the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach

Robinson, and Oscar Gustave Rejlander, art photography culminated in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of Pictorialism. French Pictorialists, Demachy, Puyo, and

Leclerc de Pulligny aimed to raise photography to the rank of art by overcoming its mechanical qualities. For this purpose, they not only appropriated traditional pictorial subjects and rules of academic picture-making but also aspired to give a painterly appearances to their works through what the French photo historian Michel Poivert calls “post-production”

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processes.43 These photographers not only retouched their negatives with paintbrushes or engraved them with burins but also employed diverse printing processes and materials, such as gum bichromate, textured paper, or platinum prints to create an artistic, and thus subjective, overtone to their works as well as rendering them precious objects. In particular, their manual intervention in their pictures aimed to reduce the perception of technological and mechanical sterility. This method was also considered to turn photography into a subjective artistic practice because the movement of the paintbrush or burin was believed to represent the photographer’s sentiments and personal expression.

This tension between photography as document and as art was reversed in the interwar period. With the growing recognition of photography’s medium-specificity, Pictorialist tenets were judged obsolete and disloyal to the medium. To liberate photography from these

“impure” practices, advocates of the New Photography reintroduced the concept of

“document” to distinguish their practice from past art photography and the traditional arts. In the wake of the New Photography in the 1920s, the idea of a photograph as a “document” was embraced by its advocates, stripped of its negative connotation, and turned into a positive term that represented the modernity of the medium and its autonomy from conventional modes of image-making.

However, this attitude embraced by avant-garde practitioners did not flourish in

France because of the persistent belief in a traditional understanding of art. The critic

Waldemar George elaborated an alternative to the documentary approach in 1930 in his

“Photographie Vision du monde” published as the introductory essay of Photographie 1930.

This article provided the first theoretically consistent account of photography and

43 Michel Poivert, “Pictorialisme, l'impur et le moderne” in Brève histoire de la photographie (Paris: Hazan, 2015), 118-119.

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considerably influenced the development of critical discourses on the medium in interwar

France. George first defines photography as écriture (writing). This expression underpins the idea that photography should be “read” as a text, in a linguistic manner (examined in detail in chapter 2). Not limited to AMG publications, the connection of photography to writing was a significant concern for those associated with Surrealism and the New Vision. However, although interpreting écriture as a concept to discuss the interrelationship between text and image is legitimate, George made little comment on this aspect of photography and used the word in a different sense:

Photography is an écriture, a way of expression, equivalent to the art of painting. The camera, the vehicle for vision, is a malleable instrument in the hands of those who use it. . . . The photo, this printable plate, reveals to man his own vision, his ideology, his reactions to phenomena. . . . Photography restores an era, not because it records the events, fashions, human types, and exterior aspects of life, but because it delivers the intimate key to thoughts, because it represents the attitude of a milieu, of a race, or of a generation.44

Here, the word écriture is employed in a similar sense to Kunstwollen. The term designates an individual’s or a period’s set of ideas or style in a given temporal and spatial setting. By defining photography both as the reflection and projection of such respective “visions,”

George establishes a framework for legitimizing the medium as an “autonomous form of artistic expression” comparable to painting and other forms of artistic creation, including music, literature, and poetry by artists in the same generation and condition. He states,

“Photography is not, as was thought, dependent on visual art. Parallel to the art of painting, it

44 Waldemar George, “Photographie, Vision du monde,” Arts et métiers graphiques 16 (March 1930): 6. “La photographie est une écriture, un moyen d’expression au même titre que l’art de la peinture. L’appareil, véhicule de la vision, est un instrument malléable entre les mains de ceux qui le manient. . . . Le cliché, cette plaque impressionnable, révèle à l’homme sa propre vision, son idéologie, ses réactions devant les phénomènes. . . . La photographie restitue une époque, non point parce qu’elle enregistre les événements, les modes, les types humains, les aspects extérieurs de la vie, mais parce qu’elle livre la clef intime des songes, parce qu’elle représente l’attitude d’un milieu, d’une race, ou d’une génération.”

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expresses, in a different way, the spirit and ideal of a century. The analogy that exists between works by photographers and contemporary ‘artist-painters’ is the fruit of the same vision.”45

Regardless of the employed means and medium, artistic and creative practices of the same time and space “obey the same rhythm” because of a shared set of ideas. Based on this thesis,

George even grants Pictorialism a place in the history of photography. Most contemporary critics and photographers in the interwar period dismissed this movement as a misunderstanding and betrayal of photography’s specific nature. However, George redefined art photography as an écriture that represents the previous century’s mindset and reevaluated it a necessary transitional phase for the medium’s modern reinterpretation in the interwar period.

From this theoretical ground, George’s argument segues into an evaluation of photography’s subjective aspects, countering the prevailing documentary approach. By assuming the presence of the photographer behind the camera and his/her creative intervention, which projects each period’s “vision” onto an image, George redefines photography as a témoignage (witnessing). He strictly distinguished this word from document:

Regardless of the intrinsic value of a photographic print, it is a witnessing. A witnessing, and not a document. . . . We should not judge it from a purely documentary point of view, this act of creation that is photography. . . . Its role is not that of a minor, mechanical art that stands in for painting, prints, or drawings in their multiple scientific or industrial applications, but that of an idiom which is a pure creative impulse, pure subjectivity. 46

45 Ibid., 8. “La photographie n’est pas, comme on l’a cru, tributaire de la plastique. Parallèle à l’art de la peinture, elle exprime, sur un plan différent l’esprit et l’idéal d’un siècle. L’analogie qui existe entre les œuvres des photographes et des «artistes peintres» contemporains, est le fruit d’une vision identique.”

46 Ibid., 7. “Quelle que soit la valeur intrinsèque d’une épreuve, cette épreuve est un témoignage. Un témoignage et non un document. . . . Nous ne devons juger, d’un point de vue purement documentaire, cet acte de création qu’est la photographie. . . . Son rôle n’est pas celui d’un art mineur et mécanique qui supplée la peinture, la gravure, le dessin dans leur multiple applications scientifiques ou bien industrielles, mais celui d’un idiome qui est pure poussée créatrice, pure subjectivité.””

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As opposed to the more utilitarian document, témoignage implies spontaneous creation inherent in artistic practices. Photography acquired its medium-specific laws and expressions in the interwar period with the awakening of what George calls “photographic consciousness.”

George emphasizes that the camera’s mechanical nature renders photography worthy of being incorporated into the field of art as an expression of the modern era’s “vision.” However, his thesis relies less on revolutionary attitudes overcoming the established hierarchy of art, as seen in the avant-garde, than on a traditional understanding of art.

This rereading of photography from mechanical document to humane witnessing also emerged out of the fear for photography’s total subordination to the machine. In the interwar period, the dramatic development of photographic products and instruments occurred. Less cumbersome cameras, emulsions with increased sensitivity, the mechanical development of high-speed shutters, better-adjusted Anastigmat lens, and other accessories significantly increased successful results and made photography more reliant on technology than on the operator’s skill and mastery of its mechanics.47 The improvement and commercial success of small format hand-held cameras, such as the Leica, Rolleiflex, and Kodak—which contributed to the development of modernist photography—made photography available to a broader public.48 Advertisements for this type of camera and related products by foreign companies—notably Leitz, Eastman Kodak, Rolleiflex, Voigtländer, Zeiss, Gevaert, Illford, and Agfa—were regularly seen in Photographie’s back matter as well as in magazines and

47 For the development of photographic equipment in this period, see, Françoise Denoyelle, La Lumière de Paris (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).

48 There was a hierarchy among small format camera. German cameras were more expensive and favored by professionals, while American products were popular among amateurs because they were more affordable. Ibid., 21-41.

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publications on the medium released by other companies (fig. 3-21). According to the statistics offered by the Ministry of Commerce of France, the import of these foreign camera products tripled between 1928 and 1931.49 The French domestic photography industry did not contribute much to the manufacture of the hand-held camera but did increase the production of films, lenses, and other equipment for the small format.50 Lumière, Tréfle, Crumière,

Guillemont and other leading French companies showcased their new products in the

Exposition de la photographie et du cinéma, organized every year by the Chambre Syndicale des Industries et du Commerce photographique at the Palais des Expositions located near the

Porte de Versailles.51

The spread of improved photographic products had a downside: the diminished necessity of photography skill. SFP associate Robert Auvillain expressed his anxiety over the technological development of photography in his essay published in Photographie in 1936.

He observed that, “the apprenticeship of this delicate art became so simplified in the last years that the clumsiest kind of operators have become capable of, in just a little time, obtaining not necessarily perfect, but acceptable images.”52 He warned that as taking photographs became easier, the role of the operator would be diminished, which would eventually make the

49 F. de Lanot, “Remarques de l'année photographique” in Photographie 1932 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1932), 136.

50 Denoyelle, “L'Industrie française,” in La Lumière de Paris, 43-88.

51 Still, the best products were made by Germans. Camera lenses by Zeiss were especially highly esteemed for their quality. Jena, the name of a German city where its headquarters was located, was often used as metonym of the company by French critics. See, for example, Sougez, “Le Rectangle,” 4. The German pavilion at the 1937 Paris World’s Fair, organized by the Nazis, also had a display of camera lenses.

52 Robert Auvillain, “Les Nouveautés techniques de l'année photographique,” in Photographie 1936 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1935), 127. “L'apprentissage de cet art délicat a été tellement simplifié au cours de ces dernières années, que le plus maladroit des opérateurs devient capable, en fort peu de temps, d'obtenir des images acceptables, sinon parfaites.”

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photographic practice an “automatism.” To compensate for the lost skill and craftsmanship, and to safeguard photography as an art form, Auvillain emphasized the importance of the photographer’s subjective intervention behind the execution of a photographic image:

It is necessary to remember that photography is really an art and regardless of the methods used, it will always allow an artistic temperament to express itself ever more easily as the tools are improved and the methods of using them become more simplified. Photographers will always have the liberty to choose their subject, to position it, to light it, and to release the mechanism of the shutter when it pleases them. The more the process becomes perfect, the more the image will be true and will faithfully express what the eye of the photographer has seen.53

Here, Auvillain describes the photograph as the consequence of a series of spontaneous decisions made by its author and defines it as a manifestation of the operator’s subjective outlook. In other words, Auvillain emphasizes photography as an art of interpretation based on the medium’s mechanical capacity. Although he focuses on lighting, composition, framing, and shutter speed, his understanding of photography is similar to that of Pictorialism. As

Poivert summarizes, art photographers in the nineteenth century viewed their practice as art of interpretation to counter its denouncement as a reproducible mechanical record without any spiritual quality.54 Auvillain’s critique repeated the same idea, even though his “art of interpretation” relied entirely on photography’s own expressive merits.

This attitude suggests that there was no radical reconsideration of art in the mainstream

French photographic scene surrounding Arts et métiers graphiques and the SFP. Many

53 Ibid., 131. “Il faut se souvenir que la photographie est vraiment un art et quelles que soient les méthodes employées, elle permettra toujours à un tempérament artistique de se manifester d’autant plus facilement, que les outils seront plus perfectionnés et les méthodes d’emploi de ceux-ci plus simplifiées. Le photographe aura toujours la liberté de choisir son sujet, de le placer, de l’éclairer, et de déclencher le mécanisme de l'obturateur, quand il lui plaira. Plus le procédé sera parfait, plus l’image sera vraie et traduira fidèlement ce que l’œil du photographe aura su voir.”

54 Poivert, Brève histoire de la photographie, 118.

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photographers and critics in interwar France recognized photography’s mechanical nature when they defined its ontology and status, but its use and purpose remained conventional and anachronistic.55 By abandoning art photography of the past, these practitioners shifted to the art of photography.56

And when the art is considered in two dimensional images, the tradition of painting starts to impose. Photography, despite its rising status in the interwar period, remained a second-rate means of image-making in comparison with painting. The continuous use of painterly terms to describe photography exemplifies this situation. For instance, critics and photographers of the SFP and AMG frequently use the word tableau to describe a photograph.

Originally used to designate a painting with an appropriate finish for display at a salon, this expression was customarily adopted by the advocates of art photography for works destined to be hung on the salon wall. Although critics and photographers in the interwar period separated the medium from its past imitation of painting, advocates of photographic art in the 1930s did not hesitate to use this expression deeply rooted in painting. French photographers remained bound to painting—the quintessentially French medium—because of its towering tradition and imposing presence and the growing nationalistic necessity. Despite the insistence on photography’s distinction from painting, its appropriation of traditional and academic idioms of picture-making were tolerated as these were what constituted French art. This contradictory nature in mid-1930s French photography conversely reveals photography’s ambivalence toward and complex against painting.

55 Dominique Baqué points out France did not have true avant-garde photography. Baqué, “Paris, promesse du modernisme,” in Les Documents de la modernité, 9-32. See especially 29-31.

56 As Quentin Bajac points out, French photography in this period was thus close to American straight photography. Bajac, “Paris à la découverte de la photographie moderne, 1929-1939,” 27-28. I will discuss the relationship between French and American photography in chapter 4.

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The Photographer as Author

The redefinition of photography as subjective art of interpretation was enforced by the growing recognition of photographers as individual authors with their own artistic styles. As photography in print media, such as illustrated magazines and publicity works, permeated people’s everyday lives, the presence of photographers in society was augmented. Before the emergence of the illustrated press, photographers were no more than image suppliers to newspapers or magazines, except for art photographers who made their tableaux for salon exhibitions. In general, photographer’s works in print media did not go beyond the illustration of articles. The main content was text, and images only played a secondary role in facilitating reading. Thus, photographers were not necessarily credited by name in newspapers and magazines. However, when photography became the main content of printed matter with the advent of the modern illustrated press, the identification of photographers became an important issue. For instance, VU, the pioneer of this field in France, specified the names of those who supplied photographs from its first issue published in March 1928. This became almost obligatory afterwards in other illustrated magazines, including Regards, Voilà, and

Match. As a result, an unprecedented number of photographers became known to the public by their individual names in the interwar period, almost for the first time in the history of the medium.

In addition to this changing social awareness, the increase of albums was another essential factor in the rise of the photographer as author. Albums and portfolios of single authorship proliferated after Krull’s Métal in 1928. A collection of photographs taken by one photographer embodies an artist’s “vision” as well as his/her photographic style. For instance,

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Paris vu par André Kertész, edited by Librairie Plon in 1934 (fig. 3-22), succinctly represents its subjective and individual nature in its content and title. This book, with forty-eight photographs by Kertész illustrates the photographer’s interpretation of the city of Paris.

Kertész captures unnoticed areas of the city, the street, and the people with the lyricism and poetic overtones typical of his work. These images constitute Paris “seen” through his eyes.

Numerous photographers in the interwar period used Paris as the subject of their publications, including Brassaï’s Paris de nuit (Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1932)

(fig. 2-56), Moï Ver’s Paris (Editions Jeanne Walter, 1931) (fig. 3-23), and Roger Schall’s

Paris de jour (Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937) (fig. 3-24). These volumes all provide different perspectives on the same city. Brassaï’s sinister and mysterious nocturnal

Paris contrasts well with Schall’s blissful and light-filled daytime Paris. While Moï Ver’s tumultuous views based on superimposition represents the dynamism of the city, Kertész’s calm eye reveals what people tend to overlook. Each Paris is vu par each photographer’s individual vision.

This emphasis on authorship and style differences became a theme of the leading feature in Photographie 1931. The volume’s first pages reproduced ten photographs by ten photographers, all capturing the same model, Wanda Hubbell (fig. 3-25). These pictures manifest ten different individual photographic styles. While Albin Guillot’s work (fig. 3-26) demonstrates an elegant and sophisticated soft-focus technique that was her signature style, the radiating portrait by the fashion photographer Georges Hoyningen-Heune represents the glamour photography typical of fashion magazines. Krull captures the model in profile and emphasizes the formal elements of her facial features and the contours from forehead, nose, and chin to neck, projecting her face against a deep shadow (fig. 3-27). André Vigneau’s

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work (fig. 3-28) slightly dehumanizes the model by soberly confronting her expressionless face as if he was creating a publicity shot.

A letter of request from Arts et métiers graphiques addressed to Vigneau for this feature highlights the intention behind the project:

We thought, in order to stimulate interest in our next issue of photographs, to propose the following idea: we would ask you, you and your most eminent colleagues, to photograph the same subjects; a still life, a landscape, a face. This is to prove to the public that, just as every painter interprets his model according to his feeling, the photographer also sees the object he intends to reproduce with his own eye according to his temperament and his personality. In a word, like each painter, each photographer has his own manière.57

The ten works clearly present their different manières. They vary in composition, lighting, and sentiment. Like tableaux, manière (came from maniera in Italian) was also a term typically associated with painting from the Renaissance period. Maniera designated each artist’s style and way of executing his painting. The appropriation of painterly terms indicated the changing social status of photographers in the interwar period as artist-authors of their artworks.

Separating PHOTO from GRAPHIE

The redefinition of photography as an autonomous art form coincided with its distinction and separation from graphic practices. Accusations of “bizarre” subjects and lack of métier in the excessive use of experimental techniques were generally paired with the

57 Fonds André Vigneau, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, Ms 2934, 450 fl, letter 312. 26 December (year unknown, but undoubtedly in 1930). “Nous avons pensé, afin de relever l'intérêt de notre prochain numéro de photographies à vous proposer l'idée suivante: nous vous demanderions, à vous et à vos confrères les plus éminents de photographier les mêmes sujets: une nature morte, un paysage, un visage. Ceci aura pour but de bien prouver au public que, de même que chaque peintre interprète son modèle selon son sentiment, de même le photographe voit avec un œil bien à lui, selon son tempérament et sa personnalité l'objet qu'il se propose de reproduire, en un mot, que comme chaque peintre, chaque photographe a ‘sa manière.’”

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criticism of media, especially publicity and illustrated magazines, in which such visual idioms were used as a means to catch public attention. Describing the beauty and quality of the photographs reproduced in Photographie 1935, Vétheuil questioned, “Can we confuse a reportage with a series of images meditated for a long time? A publicity agency with the efforts of a solitary artist?”58 He attacked these two fields because photographers’ original intentions for their works are inevitably diminished in the process of producing such printed media. In both reportage and publicity, photographs are subject to modification and editing.

Editors and designers have the freedom to crop, edit, and paste images supplied by photographers to create a final product and may combine these images with other graphic elements, including typography and non-photographic illustrations. In this regard, photography is one of many components combined in these mass media, subordinated to the editor’s and designer’s will rather than the photographer’s. Vétheuil’s criticism of illustrated magazines and publicity works conveys the emergence of an intentional distinction between two types of photography. On the one hand, he distinguishes photographs to be absorbed and consumed in graphic media. On the other hand, he identifies photography made for serious artistic expression and contemplation. Arts et métiers graphiques and Photographie around

1934 exemplified this separation between graphic art photography and that of photographic art.

58 Vétheuil, “Considération sur l'évolution de la photographie,” 123. “Mais, peut-on confondre un reportage avec une suite d'images longuement méditées? Une agence de publicité avec les efforts d'un artiste isolé?”

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Changes in Editorial Stance of Arts et Métiers Graphiques

As I have demonstrated, Photographie 1935 marked a watershed in the shift from modernism to conservatism, as well as the rise of the art of photography. The volume’s cover design symbolically represents the intentional distinction between photography as graphic practice and photographic practice (fig. 3-4). Throughout its existence, the cover of

Photographie was principally composed of the alphabetic letters “PHOTOGRAPHIE” printed in various typefaces and fonts owned by Deberny et Peignot typefoundry. The design of the famous first issue lays out the title in Europe on a solid black background. The phrase is separated into “PHOTO” and “GRAPHIE” and evenly arranged on two lines of the same size.

This austere but sophisticated format continued until the 1933-34 issue, with variations in typeface, font, and background color.59

However, in the 1935 issue, the proportion and balance of these title letters started to change: PHOTO became larger and began overshadowing GRAPHIE (fig. 2-12). This focus on PHOTO certainly reflected the album’s abbreviation, “AMG’s PHOTO.” Both the publisher and its audience used this expression after the album gained recognition with the success of its first year.60 More importantly, the title’s style change indicates that the volume’s content started to concentrate more on purely autonomous photographic works in distinguishing itself from the practices in the service of graphic art. The French suffix graphie represented the idea of graphisme, or graphic design. In “Graphisme,” the seminal 1929 essay published in Arts et métiers graphiques, Mac Orlan counted photographie among the essential

59 The typefaces used for each issue’s cover are: Europe (1930), Europe (1931), Egyptienne (1932), Europe (1933-34), Antique (1935), Antique (1936), Classique and Antique (1937), Peignot (1938), Egyptienne (1939) and Egyptienne and Italienne (1940).

60 “A nos lecteurs,” Arts et métiers graphiques 27 (January 1932): n.p. This front matter announcement refers Photographie 1931 as “PHOTO 1931.”

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components of modern graphic innovations.61 The diminished graphie on the cover of

Photographie 1935 suggests that photography’s identity as photo came to count more than its relation to graphie in this issue. Furthermore, symbolically, the isolation of “PHOTO” on the cover was made visually outstanding through a photogram executed by Pierre Boucher. As

René Zuber explained in Arts et métiers graphiques 46, the photogram was “the most conscious result of ‘pure photography’” that embodied its etymology—“drawing by light”— in its process of directly capturing light without any mechanical intervention.62 Thus, the cover design of Photographie 1935 was the declaration of its dedication to the “pure” existence of photography and its distinction from its composite form in graphic practices.

In addition to Photographie, the year 1934 marked changes in editorial attitudes toward photography in Arts et métiers graphiques. The magazine started to deal with the medium independently in two ways. First, the magazine installed a new article heading, “Photography and Photographers.” Until the beginning of its eighth year (issue 43, October 1934, published a month after Photographie 1935), Arts et métiers graphiques placed essays on the medium, such as Brassaï's “Technique de la photographie de nuit” and Tabard's “Note sur la solarization,” either under the “Technique” or “Variety” headings with practical and theoretical accounts on typography and printing in general. However, from 1934 onward, essays on photography were independently categorized.

Second, this change in editorial principle influenced the presentation of “Actualité graphique.” Although its primary purpose was to display outstanding examples of graphic design, this popular column also reproduced numerous photographs independently beginning

61 Pierre Mac Orlan, “Graphisme,” Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 645-652.

62 René Zuber, “Photogramme,” Arts et métiers graphiques 46 (April 1935): 34-36.

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in 1930 (fig. 3-29). Arts et métiers graphiques 18 provides the first instance of this, printing two photographs by Sougez under the column’s title in a manner similar to that of

Photographie. The image on the left, capturing potatoes in a bowl, is placed along the page’s bottom edge, while the right-hand image, a close-up of a cabbage, is printed in a full-bleed layout, anticipating the variation of printing compositions in Photographie. Unlike other specimens of commercial and informative printed matters featured in the column, these works have no indication of their use and intention; they are simply captioned as “Two Photographs by Sougez.” Similarly, “Actualité Graphique” in subsequent issues contained independent plates by Aenne Biermann, Jean Moral, Barré, Errell, Brassaï, Maurice Cloche, and Henri

Cartier-Bresson until issue 41 (May 1934). Thus, the magazine’s treatment of photography was deeply rooted in the contexts of graphic art from the late 1920s to the early 1930s, as I examined in the preceding chapters. These photographic plates, even though they were not necessarily destined for publicity, were grouped under the column for graphie. However, the column stopped this practice in 1934. With the growing awareness of photography as such in the magazine’s editorial policy, independent photographic plates disappeared from “Actualité graphique.”

Photographie 1935 notably coincided with the first issue of Publicité, another important annual special of Arts et métiers graphiques (fig. 3-30) (first published as AMG 42, May 15,

1934, and later continued as an annual until l939 with the same pattern of publishing as

Photographie). Publicité was conceived as a volume to showcase the latest publicity designs produced in France and was released a month before Photographie 1935. Modeled on

“Actualité Graphique,” this publication functioned as a catalogue of posters, brochures, pamphlets, and other commercial print media, many containing photographic elements. While

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Photographie served as a platform for serious picture-making and its contemplative reception,

Publicité provided a space for graphic design. The two publications thus took different roles in presenting photography’s PHOTO and GRAPHIE, respectively.

Afterlife of Modernism

The division of photography’s uses corresponded with photographic styles. Previous studies have proposed a linear narrative in which conservatism replaced modernism in the mid-1930s because of the rappel à l'ordre. However, modernism did not die out. While

Photographie became dominated by a conservative and traditionalist tendency from 1934 onward, Publicité continued displaying images with a typical modernist visual repertoire.

Photomontage, solarization, double-exposure, extreme close-up, and angled views remained actively employed in the field of graphic design until the end of the 1930s (fig. 3-31).

Duval’s critique of Boucher published in Arts et métiers graphiques 49 in 1935 testifies to this intentional distinction in the use of techniques according to the different purposes and destinations of photography (fig. 3-32). Duval first admires the landscape and nude photographs featured in Photographie 1935 for Boucher’s selection of subjects, his technical command, and his sophisticated taste. In particular, Duval focuses on a picture that captures the façade of a bistro in the countryside (fig. 3-33). Examining the visual details of the picture, such as the color of the wall and the letters on advertisements glued on the bistro’s windows, Duval comments that this photograph makes him want to see the photographer in person. In these remarks, Duval straightforwardly applies the typical propensity to treat photography as the manifestation of the creator’s personality. His desire to meet the author is inspired by his photograph, the emanation of Boucher’s self. In describing Boucher’s nude

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photographs, Duval also mentions, “it is also their [photographers’] brain and their heart that these photographs place bare.”63

After praising the formal, aesthetic, and even moralistic virtues of Boucher’s works,

Duval focuses on his talent as a publicity designer who can skillfully balance typography and photography. He compares Boucher’s photographs and his graphic works as follows: “In addition, while he does not use any technical preciosity for his landscapes and nudes, he likes, on the contrary, to use photograms, photomontages, papiers collés, all the divertissements of scissors, of airbrushing, and of the camera lens in publicity.”64 This observation highlights an intentional distinction in photographic styles: Boucher limits the application of modernist techniques to the field of publicity works. Duval’s use of the word divertissement also indicates the status of these photographic techniques. Defining these techniques as light- hearted and playful leisure activities, Duval opposes experimental practices to the serious picture-making seen in Photographie. Modernism was thus confined to commercial and utilitarian purposes, to entertain people’s eye, and as such, was expelled from the realm of photographic art, which was to be contemplated and appreciated on its artistic and photographic merits.

This division included the judgment of the appropriate and inappropriate uses of modernism; thus, these divertissements were tamed with rules and regulations. Duval introduces the measurement of juste, meaning accurate or appropriate, to determine the legitimacy of experimental techniques in graphic works. Describing the intellectual and

63 Duval, “Pierre Boucher,” 46. “C'est aussi leur cerveau et leur cœur qu'ils mettent à nu...”

64 Ibid. “De plus, n'usant d'aucune préciosité technique pour ses paysages, et ses nus, il aime au contraire pour la publicité les photogrammes, les photomontages, les papiers collés, tous les divertissements des ciseaux, de l'aérographe et de l'objectif.”

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sophisticated employment of photomontage and double-exposure by the Swiss photographer and designer Herbert Matter, Duval evaluates his use of these “tricks” as juste (fig. 3-34).65

Matter’s employment of photomontage based on a sophisticated combination of a few pieces of images is utterly different from the chaotic applications seen, for instance, in Berlin Dada.

In 1934, Vox described that a good photomontage should be composed of a limited number of photographs to retain its legibility and sense of measurement.66 Matter’s works follow this decent—and thus juste—use of the technique. Once a powerful means to alter conventional visual experiences, modernism in photography was almost completely stylized by the mid-

1930s.

For the Education of Amateurs

The Rise of Amateurs

Modernist visual idioms were also recycled as educational tools for teaching amateur photographers in the mid-1930s, offering lessons in the photographic medium. Vox recommended novice photographers exercise photomontage in their daily practice to work out their own sense of harmony. When he explains that “one millimeter of displacement can play a great role”67 in photomontage, he assumes that the technique offers excellent training for amateurs to develop the patience and sensitivity necessary for the execution of purely photographic and aesthetic works. Along with the juste-ification seen in Matter’s

65 Rémy Duval, “Herbert Matter,” Arts et métiers graphiques 51 (February 1936): 47. Matter once worked as an illustrator at Studio Deberny et Peignot.

66 Vox, “Le Photomontage,” 9.

67 Ibid. “[U]n milimètre de déplacement pouvant jouer un grand rôle.”

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photomontages, “bizarre” visual repertoires and “tricks” were transformed into educational tools for novice photographers.

The number of amateur photographers increased dramatically in the interwar period.

As a series of studies by French curator and photo historian Clément Chéroux demonstrates, amateur practices prefigured and inspired experimental techniques in avant-garde photography.68 Double-exposure was a frequent error seen among amateurs when they forgot to turn the film or change the plate after exposure. Photomontage was employed as a pastime at home (thus a true divertissement) and made popular mass entertainment by itinerant photographers at local festivals or fairs and the circulation of fantastic postcards in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, the practice itself had existed long before the Berlin Dadaists coined the term “photomontage.”69 A number of avant-garde photographers, who discovered the possibility of such errors and divertissements in photography to inspire new perceptions, were themselves amateur photographers. Most prominently, the main protagonist of the New

Vision, Moholy-Nagy, was primarily an artist who explored photography for the sake of art, not for photographic art. Although he took many photographs and revolutionized the medium, he never considered himself a photographer. In fact, his wife and professional photographer,

Lucia Moholy, developed his negatives, attesting to the amateurism of the New Vision.

In addition to these amateur photographer-artists, the interwar period experienced a significant growth of true amateur photographers due to the technological advancement of the

68 Clément Chéroux, Avant avant-garde: du jeu en photographie 1890-1940 (Paris: Textuel, 2015). There were also exhibitions that focused on the origin of such experimental practice of the 1920s. See for instance, Mia Fineman and Thomas P Campbell, eds. Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012).

69 Dawn Ades, Photomontage (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 12. It was Raoul Haussmann, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Johannes Baader, and Hannah Höch who agreed to use this term as the name for their photographic practice.

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photographic instrument.70 It is true that the popularization of photography had occurred in the 1880s with the release of the Kodak hand-held camera and the development of gelatin silver bromide and flexible celluloid film. However, if these factors generated the first wave of amateur photographers in the late nineteenth century, the refinement of photographic equipment in the interwar period brought about its true popularization. Encouraged also by the decrease in prices—especially for cameras—photography became a handy hobby that anyone could afford. De Lanot attests to new products enabling amateurs “to obtain with the camera for beginners, the results that one could obtain only with those of higher price before.”71

This rise of amateur photographers, however, was also seen as a decline in quality by those who advocated photography as tableaux, such as Auvillain, who criticized the

“automatism” of photography. Accordingly, critics started to insist on the education of these newbies by professional photographers. For example, in Photographie 1938, French photographer of the SFP and a member of Le Rectangle René Servant criticized amateurs. He acknowledged that contemporary photographers learned from them but these novices also created “disorder” and a decline in the quality of photography. He insisted this decline be corrected by the intervention of professionals who could offer a métier that “the newcomers did not possess yet, and could not even possess, for these would not be acquired without long

70 Martin Dacos, “Le Regard oblique: Diffusion et appropriation de la photographie amateur dans les campagnes (1900-1950),” Etudes photographiques 11(May 2002): 3. Dacos points out that “amateur” started to include “Monsieur Tout le monde” in the 1930s and had its true vulgarization, while the same word had long been associated with wealthy bourgeois practitioners who were eager to pursue aesthetic expressions.

71 De Lanot, “Remarques de l'année photographique,” 126. The technological innovation “permet d'obtenir avec un appareil de débutant des résultats que l'on n'obtenait auparavant qu'avec des appareils d'un prix élevé.”

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training.”72 These serious photographers, unlike amateurs who lightheartedly enjoyed taking surprising and charming photographs, sought to “perfect their means of execution” and create their artistic tableaux.73

This urge to teach amateurs led to the establishment of formal educational institutions.74

The first state-supported Parisian school for photography, the Ecole technique de photographie et cinématographie, opened in 1923 and was followed by several private institutions, such as Publiphot, founded by the German photographer Gertrude Fehr and her painter husband Jules Fehr in 1934. Even before the 1930s, the SFP and local photo-clubs in

France provided lectures and conferences in which the members reported on their latest discoveries and research. However, these organizations were more like gentlemen’s societies and écoles mutuelles, in which the participants taught each other, rather than offering a programmatic education with a fixed curriculum.75 Photography schools were thus an interwar phenomenon, underscoring the medium’s democratization and the growing interest in photography as a hobby and profession.

72 René Servant, “Technique 1938” in Photographie 1938 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1937), 113. “Une technique, que les nouveaux venus ne possédaient pas encore, ne pouvaient posséder, car ceux-ci ne s’acquièrent pas sans un long travail.”

73 Ibid., 114. “ils . . . perfectionnèrent leurs moyens d'éxécution.”

74 A similar situation emerged in the late nineteenth century with the commercialization of Kodak in the 1880s. For the education of amateurs in this period, see Clément Chéroux, “4. L'Expert et l'usager: Ubiquité de l'amateurisme photographique” in Vernaculaire: Essais d'histoire de la photographie (Paris: Le Point du Jour, 2013), 81-97.

75 De Lanot, “Remarques de l'année photographique,” 136.

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Photo-Ciné-Graphie

In addition to schools, magazines for amateur photographers also increased in the interwar period. Major publications such as Photo-Illustration (founded 1934), Photo pour tous (1923), and L'Instantané (1930) all started in this period. As one of the leading publishing houses of the medium, Editions Arts et Méiters Graphiques was a major player in this emerging field. In 1933, Peignot initiated a new magazine for amateur photographers,

Photo-ciné-graphie: Revue photographique et cinématographique pour l’amateur (1933-

1936; its name was later changed to La Revue de la photographie with issue 34, December

1935) (fig. 3-35). This monthly periodical offered technical and practical tips for those who wanted to improve the quality of their photographic works, targeting both complete beginners and amateurs avertis, or informed amateurs, who had already attained sufficient skill in photography.76

Conceived as “the most interesting, most useful, and most well-made” publication of its kind, Photo-ciné-graphie offered articles teaching “thousands of small tips and technical progress” and providing logical explanations for the mistakes amateur practitioners frequently made.77 The magazine covered a wide variety of topics to respond to the essential needs, demands, and concerns of contemporary practitioners. Subjects ranged from the selection of appropriate equipment and camera settings to manuals for do-it-yourself accessories that

76 Advertisement in Arts et métiers graphiques 43 (October, 1934): n.p.. No public library collection holds the first nine issues of this magazine, even the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

77 Ibid. “Photo Ciné Graphie: la plus intéressante, la plus utile, la mieux faite des revues publiées à l'intention des Photographes et Cinéastes Amateurs.” “[E]lle apprend mille petites trucs et progrès technique; elle explique les erreurs.”

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would ease photographers’ lives. The magazine also offered theoretical articles and interactive courses on picture-making, including composition, lighting, and framing.78

As a publication of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, Photo-ciné-graphie’s contents were directly affected by the editorial stance of Arts et métiers graphiques and

Photographie. Photo-ciné-graphie’s articles were written by “the best artists,” including

Sougez, Duval, Servant, Auvillain, and Vétheuil, who actively contributed to publishing projects led by Peignot. Their essays regularly appeared in the magazine throughout its run.

Focusing on Sougez, the French photo historian Juliette Lavie demonstrates that the magazine functioned as a paper alternative to the photographer’s studio in which professionals’ savoir- faire and savoir-voir were delivered to their apprentices (i.e., the readers of the magazine).79

In addition to essays by established photographers, the magazine offered an advisory service via mail for improving readers’ photographic productions. In short, the magazine was a learning platform for those who seriously pursued the art of photography, rather than an arena for daily snap shooters, Sunday family photographers, or politically engaged amateur photography movements.80

Unlike Photographie and Arts et métiers graphiques, Photo-ciné-graphie was an affordable magazine sold for only two francs per issue and available at any bookstore or newsstand. Nevertheless, the magazine’s editorial board, led by Peignot and André Lejard, the

78 Though the portion dedicated to “ciné” was much smaller than “photo,” the magazine also contained regular features for filmmakers, offering tips on operating film cameras and sample scenarios for amateur scriptwriters.

79 Juliette Lavie, “La revue, un outil de transmission des savoirs d'ateliers?: L'Exemple d'Emmanuel Sougez dans la revue PHOTO-CINE-GRAPHIE (1933-1936)” in Art et transmission: L'Atelier du XIXe au XXIe Siècle, ed. Alain Bonnet et al. (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014), 176.

80 A communist-driven international amateur photography movement, the Worker Photography movement, did not really flourish in France. See, Simon Dell, “The Difficult Conjunction of ‘Worker’ and ‘Photographer’ in France,” in The Worker Photography Movement (1926-1939): Essays and Documents, ed. Jorge Ribalta (Madrid: Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 2011), 354-362.

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chief editor of Arts et métiers graphiques, did not compromise the quality of its illustrations, which was the hallmark of AMG publications. Most other French amateur photography magazines of this period—for example, the widely-read La Revue française de la photographie (1920-1940), published by Editions Paul Montel—were primarily composed of text. By contrast, Photo-ciné-graphie was amply illustrated with héliogravure plates, which rendered high-quality reproduced photographs equal to Photographie, despite its lower price.

In this respect, Photo-ciné-graphie was an affordable version of AMG’s signature publications. The magazine thus played a mediating role in making the “most beautiful photographs” reproduced in Photographie and other books available to a broader public.

The Paradox of Photographic Tableaux

Among other features of Photo-ciné-graphie, Duval’s regular column, “Analyse picturale” (fig. 3-36) that embodies not only the magazine’s pedagogic principle but also a dilemma of photographic art and its complex relationship with painting. This column, one of the most popular features of the magazine, began in issue 17 (July 1934) and continued until the last issue, 37 (June 1936). Duval picked one photograph each month (mostly by professional photographers but sometimes by amateurs),81 providing a meticulous analysis of the photograph’s formal elements from technical and aesthetic points of view and instructing amateurs on composing like professionals. Examples of featured photographers included those championed in Photographie: Boucher, Albin Guillot, Juliette Lasserre, Moral, Ergy

Landau, Dumas, Vadas, and Rogi André.

81 Duval picked up works by amateurs for three times in “Analyse picturale” in issue 22 (December 1934), 27 (May 1935), and 32 (October 1935).

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Duval’s examination primarily focuses on each work’s composition. In the first

“Analyse picturale,” he stated that he would “decompose and critique” a selected photograph.82 This attention to composition and the use of the word pictural, an adjective designating things related to painting, underscore that Duval treated photographs as two dimensional images equivalent to painting. Indeed, Duval adopted basic formal analytical methods from art historical studies and academic artistic training. In an article printed in the magazine in 1933, Sougez points out that understanding composition is similar to taking art history courses and emphasizes its importance for both taking and seeing photographs. He insists that the appeal of photography “resides uniquely in the equilibrium of elements, in the organization of lines, in a word, in the general harmony” realized through the strict application of geometry.83 Sharing Sougez’s perspective, Duval uses a schematic drawing abstracting the selected picture into its essential geometric compositional elements, such as lines and planes. Putting alphabetic letters on the composing planes in the drawing helped him explain the connection and balance between each compositional component. Usually inserted next to the reproduced photograph, such drawings facilitated the readers understanding of the work’s pictorial and formal structure.

Authors in Photo-ciné-graphie did not consider composition merely a formal factor of picture-making; they believed it enabled photographers to correctly express themselves.

Sougez asserts that the act of composer is an essential human behavior, the kernel of every creative activity. For example, he insists that the final shape and appearance of a Gothic

82 Rémy Duval, “Analyse picturale,” Photo-ciné-graphie 17 (July 1934), 10. “Il nous a paru intéressant de nous arrêter ici un peu longuement sur une épreuve pour la décomposer et le critiquer.”

83 Emmanuel Sougez, “Sujets et composition,” Photo-ciné-graphie 10 (December 1933): 10. The appeal of photography “réside uniquement dans l'équilibre des éléments, dans l'ordonnance de lignes, en un mot, dans une harmonie général.”

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cathedral, a work of architecture (i.e., its composition), is almost naturally and spontaneously determined by the subjective intention of its author-artist.84 Reflecting this idea, which was widely shared by contemporary French photographers, Duval usually began his “Analyse picturale” with an examination of the photograph’s “general atmosphere,” or the author’s intended physical and sensorial ambiance.85 Duval posits that the visualization of “atmosphere” is achieved through a careful composition based on the selection of framing and view angles.

The balance of pictorial elements on the surface of a tableau can change its impression, thus its “atmosphere.” “Analyse picturale” explains how to control this ambiance by providing the general rules for composing a picture.

Because of its practicality, “Analyse picturale” quickly gained popularity and became the only column that continued until the last issue of the magazine. Given the favorable reception of his feature, Duval was also put in charge of critiquing amateur photographs in another representative section of the magazine, “Envois de nos abonnés.” This column was first assigned one page to exhibit the readers’ works without any accompanying commentary.

Responding to frequent requests by subscribers, however, its size was doubled in issue 21

(November 1934) and started to appear alongside detailed critiques by Duval (fig. 3-37).86

Even before Duval was entrusted with the section, Photo-ciné-graphie provided technical commentary on works by amateurs in two columns, “Erreurs expliquées” and “Les Enigmes photographiques?” These features chose amateur photographs with common and mysterious phenomena, such as multiple exposure, blurring, or silvering of developed photographs. These

84 Ibid., 10.

85 Duval, “Analyse picturale,” 10.

86 “Envois de nos aboonés,” Photo-ciné-graphie 21 (November 1934): 17.

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are usually caused by a lack of technological understanding or mishandling of the camera and film. These two sections offered logical explanations and instructions on such photographic

“errors” and “enigmas.” While these columns treated amateur works as materials for explication, “Envois de nos abonnés” examined them based on their aesthetic and technical merits in a manner similar to “Analyse picturale.” The readers’ growing demand for critique by a professional photographer indicates that these amateurs wanted to evaluate their progress after learning the professionals’ métier taught in the magazine’s articles.

Photo-ciné-graphie’s primary goal was improvement in the general quality of amateur photography. Duval’s “Analyse picturale” provided this goal’s principal driving force and encouraged amateurs to display originality in their photographs. However, his educational program, based on the appreciation and examination of a finished tableau, created a paradoxical situation because it encouraged amateurs to copy professionals’ works. For instance, a work by amateur photographer Polissard (fig. 3-38) in “Envois de nos abonnés” published in issue 23 (January 1935) bears an unmistakable resemblance to Sougez’s still life arrangement (fig. 3-39) that appears in the same issue. Both images capture fragments of a shattered porcelain bowl arranged on the floor. Sougez’s work was originally published a year earlier in Photographie 1933-34 (fig. 3-40) and was frequently reproduced in other publications, including VU. Thus, Polissard highly likely already knew Sougez’s work and tried to imitate the master photographer’s composition. However, compared to the rich variation and interplay of light and shadow in the professional’s picture, the impersonator’s appears to be no more than a second-rate copy. Similar instances are found throughout the column’s existence, especially with landscape photography, which was the most featured subject in “Analyse picturale.” Duval’s initial motive for the column was to provide

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exemplars for amateurs to familiarize themselves with the basic criteria for acceptable works, so they could use these lessons when they create original works. Thus, this case of copying seems ironic.

This incident represents the art of photography’s inherent dilemma created by its reliance on painterly tradition and education. In teaching rules and formulae to compose and decompose a picture, “Analyse picturale” focused on looking at a photograph as autonomous artwork in the same manner as painting. In other words, the readers were taught to look at photographs/tableaux rather than their subjects. Here, the quality of an image and the dimensions of the photograph were important, not what the photograph captured. Therefore, photographers, like Polissard, determined their subjects based on their knowledge of professionals’ works, like Sougez’s. Not limited to amateurs, this imitation was also prevalent among professional photographers. The almost identical landscape photographs by Renger-

Patzsch (fig. 3-13) and Gorny (fig. 3-12) offer a typical example. Here, Gorny seeks the landscape of his mentor’s work in nature, instead of discovering nature itself. Because a photograph objectively reproduces reality, the resulting picture represents the photographer’s direct confrontation with what he/she sees in nature. However, here, it is the existing picture that affects the photographers’ understanding of their subjects. The use of finished tableaux as models for photographing betrays both photography’s own medium-specific capacity to record and the idea of originality, thus doubly contradicts photography’s mechanism and art’s principles. Consequently, the reliance on painterly tradition makes the pursuit of the art of photography almost an impossible mission.

When Sougez commented on Duval’s approach in “Analyse picturale,” he seems to have foreseen this potential danger. While Sougez did not criticize Duval’s educational

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approach, which was based on the perfection of photography as a two-dimensional image, he did not fully subscribe to it either.87 Instead, he emphasized that photographers must look around the world with their own eyes before taking a photographs. He states, “There is, in this nature, no “badly-composed” landscape. One needs to know how to ‘carve from within.’ Each fragment contains within itself the sum of harmony necessary for this balance, and the one who knows or feels draws what is essential from it effortlessly.”88 As this statement indicates,

Sougez’s articles in Photo-ciné-graphie gradually shifted from technical advice to more thoughtful essays on how to find a subject by looking attentively around the world.

The Revival of Flou and Mixing Styles

In addition to subjectivity, métier was also a watchword in interwar French photography. Critics and photographers generally overused this expression to designate technical prowess and skills in picture-making. However, the concept’s exact meaning remained ambiguous. As photographers relied on photographic means, or métier, including the selection of viewing angles, composition, focus, and framing, their works were “pure” and opposed to the “impure” art photography of the past. This artisanship also helped distinguish their works from photography made as “art for the art’s sake.”89 Their métier enabled each photographer to use his/her own subjectivity by appropriately controlling the outcome of the

87 It is suggestive that Duval later pursued a career as a painter in the post-war period.

88 Sougez, “Sujets et composition,” 12. “Il n’y a pas, dans cette nature, de paysage ‘mal composés’. Il faut savoir ‘tailler dedans’. Chaque fragment contient en soi la somme d’harmonie nécessaire à cet équilibre et celui qui sait ou qui sent en dégage sans effort l’essentiel.”

89 Juliette Lavie, “Une autre image sociale du photographe: Du photographe artiste au photographe artisan 1930- 1960,” Image de l’artiste, eds. Eric Darragon and Bertrand Tillier, Territoires contemporains 4, online journal, Territoires contemporains 4 http://tristan.u-bourgogne.fr/CGC/publications/image_artiste/Juliette_Lavie.html

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photographic process. However, at the apogee of such métier photography, the mid-1930s also experienced the revival of the notorious method of flou, or “blurriness.”

Flou designated soft-focus surface effects, which had been favored by Pictorialists, to grant an artistic look to photographic prints. This method was the ultimate target of modernist attacks in the wake of the New Photography and the documentary principle based on the mechanical precision of the camera. French modernist contrasted flou with net—sharpness or clearness—that was attributed to photography as a documentary practice. As Dominique

Baqué discusses, this dichotomy constituted one of the central issues to consider in interwar

France, and net was embraced as the hallmark of modern photography.90 However, despite the dominance of net, pictures with flou resurged in the mid-1930s. In the competition held in

Photographie 1935, in which Vadas’ work with geese (fig. 3-20)—the exemplar of “pure” photography beloved by contemporary critics—won first place, a British photographer,

Alexander Keighley, won fifth place with a picture that demonstrates flou (fig. 3-41). His soft- focus image makes a sharp contrast to the work of the other contest winners and to the favored photographers of the annual, including Gorny, Sougez, and Vadas, who all based their merits on photography’s mechanical precision and its power of intense penetration.

One of the backgrounds for this revival of flou was a collaboration and association with the SFP, which kept exhibiting soft-focus art photographs throughout this period. Indeed,

Keighely’s work was displayed in the group’s salon in 1934, which was an essential input for

Photographie 1935.91 However, this was not merely as a result of Photographie’s

90 Baqué, Les Documents de la modernité, 22-24.

91 His British origin should also count here. Great Britain had its own history of photography and another distinctive photographic scene. Interwar British photography altogether, especially around the Royal Photographic Society, the equivalent of the SFP, needs further elaboration, so does the situation in other Western European countries.

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collaboration but also an embodiment of the complete stylization of photography’s visual idioms. In fact, the use of this anachronistic method was not limited to those associated with the SFP. Vadas, who was renowned for being the best “pure” photographer (fig. 3-20), also used flou in one of his works reproduced in Photo-ciné-graphie in 1934 (fig. 3-42).

Interestingly, however, Vadas also employed the plongée view in an earlier issue of the magazine (fig. 3-43). Strictly based on the mobility of small format hand-held cameras, angles from above or below were symbolically associated with modernist photography and thus targeted as one of its “bizarre” repertoires and “tricks.” The use of these two opposite methods, both criticized in the pursuit of photography’s métier, by a single photographer cannot be accounted for by a simple revival of the style of art photography. This was a pastiche of existing photographic styles and techniques. Vadas’ works are both stylized. On the one hand, his plongée view does not manifest the abstract and detached formal quality typically seen in the works by the New Vision but is more anecdotic in content and decorative in composition. On the other hand, his flou appropriates the Pictorialist method yet shows the formal concern of the New Photography to treat a picture as an abstract composition with its rhythmical alternation of black and white, as well as the contrast of rectilinear and curvilinear shapes.

Duval’s following comment on Vadas’s use of flou summarizes how this situation was understood in this period:

It took courage to use an anachromat [soft-focus lens developed by the Austrian- German art photographer Heinrich Kühn]. We know the trend of “artistic lenses,” used in France by photographers who followed the style of Pulligny, Demachy, Puyo. The only mistake, I believe, was having called them “artistic,” as with the word “flou.” The post-war period, for this reason, has almost wholly rejected them. It was wise, indeed, to return to precision, to certainty. Now these hollow disputes are forgotten. There is

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no reason to use or reject an “opal” instead of solarization! What is important is to move people’s hearts.92

Comparing flou with solarization—a typical Pictorialist method with one of the modernist experimentations—Duval stated that photographers could now employ any techniques or processes in a manner that appropriately served the photographer’s artistic creation.93 This statement testifies that photography’s visual vocabulary had become looser and more flexible by the mid-1930s.

These situations indicate that a completely eclectic photographic tenet emerged in this period. André Lhote provides a more nuanced explanation and summarized the situation surrounding the medium in France in the mid-1930s in his review of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine organized by Peignot in 1936. This essay,

“Un Peintre chez les photographes,” appeared as the leading article for issue 35 of La Revue de la photographie (former Photo-Ciné-Graphie). Lhote expressed his disappointment at not seeing the photomontages and double exposures that he had expected in the show. He regarded these two practices, both widely recognized with the introduction of the New

Photography to France in the late 1920s, as creative means that were “the witnessing of ingeniousness, malice, imagination, perversity; in short, the poetic quality of

92 Rémy Duval, “Analyse picturale,” La Revue de la photographie 37 (June 1936): 13. “Il fallait du courage pour se servir d'un anachromat. On sais la vogue des “objectifs d'artiste” dont se servaient en France les Pulligny, les Demachy, les Puyo. Le seul tort, je crois, fut de les avoir dénommé “artiste” comme le “flou”. L'après-guerre les a, pour cette raison, presque complètement rejetés. C'était sage, en effet, de revenir à la précision, à la sûreté. Maintenant ces creuses disputes sont oubliées. Pas de raisons pour se servir ou rejeter un “opale” plutôt qu'une solarisation! L'important est d'émouvoir.”

93 Duval, too, used soft-focus lenses in this period and exhibited such works in the Exposition interntionale de la photographie contemporaine in 1936. See the plate section of the show’s catalogue: Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine (Paris: Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 1936), plate iii.

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photographers.”94 His disappointment, however, quickly transformed to admiration of

“beautiful photographs”:

I would have been disillusioned if, walking around the exhibition, my initial desire [to see photomontages and double exposures] had not been gradually abandoned due to the calm and persuasive merit of some beautiful prints, in which (God, how fashions change quickly in photography as in painting!) the [photographic] processes that were favored yesterday no longer remain: flou, negative prints, excessive effects of reflecting mirrors, solarization. Thus it seems to me that the photographers have reached the point in their evolution when, having experimented with all the faisandages of their métier, they aim to attain the pure image, to achieve formal beauty through the perfection of their means, just like the Cubists, in the period following the what we call “heroic” period.95

Here, like Duval, Lhote counted flou along with other modernist methods among the photographic processes that were no longer favored. He then described these methods as the stage of faisandage in photography’s evolution. This particular French expression concerns the hanging of gibiers animals before consummation, which causes the maturation of its taste through decomposition. Every technique and process in photography until the early 1930s became faisandé and ready to be consumed as a formal repertoire free of its original ideological and philosophical backgrounds in the mid- to late 1930s. This situation thus repeats Cubism’s stylization after its “heroic” period and may also be called a Mannerism in photography.

94 André Lhote, “Un peintre chez les photographes,” La Revue de la photographie 35 (February 1936): 1. These works are “les témoignage de l’ingéniosité, de la malice, de l’imagination, de la perversité, bref des qualités poétique des photographes.”

95 Ibid. “Je serais désillusionné si chemin faisant, mon désir initial ne m’avait pas insensiblement abandonné, par la tranquille vertu persuasive de quelques belles épreuves, où (Dieu, que les modes vont vite en photo comme en peinture!) ne subsistent plus les procédés hier encore en faveur: flou, tirages en négatif, jeux excessifs de réflecteurs, solarisation. Ainsi, les photographes m’apparaissent-ils arrivés à ce point de leur évolution où ayant expérimenté tous les faisandages du métier, ils visent à atteindre à l’image pure, à la beauté formelle à travers la perfection des moyens, tout comme les cubistes, à l’époque qui suivit celle dite ‘héroïque’”.

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French critic H. Alloend Bessand declared in his article “La Photographie est-elle un art?”, published in Photo-ciné-graphie in 1934, “Do flou and do net, on such and such papers, do what you want, but especially do what you feel and as you feel it. In a word, be yourself in your work.”96 Such understandings engendered a situation in which photography became a practice of pastiche. If it manifested the photographer’s subjective vision and his/her mastery of photography’s métier, any technique or expression could be tolerated. However, both

“subjectivity” and “métier” were concepts without any clear definition, like the idea of

“universalism” that characterized French art in this period and the publications of Arts et métiers graphiques. These ideas, embraced by photographers and critics in mid-1930s France, absorbed anything but lacked consistent core content, making the French photographic scene a vacuum. As such, these expressions prove the theoretical weakness of the art of photography developed in this period in France.

96 H. Alloend Bessand, “La Photographie est-elle un art?” Photo-ciné-graphie 15 (May 1934): 4. “'Faites flou ou faites net, sur tel ou tel papier, faites ce que voudrez, mais surtout faite ce que sentez et comme vous le sentez. En un mot, soyez vous-même dans votre œuvre.” It is suggestive that Photographie since its 1938 issue revived its focus on modernist idioms, but in a more formally and aesthetically sophisticated way. The opening section of Photographie 1939 was also dedicated to experimental techniques.

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Chapter 4

Displaying Photography and Graphic Art:

Charles Peignot and Two Expositions internationales, 1936-1937

In 1936, Charles Peignot organized a photography exhibition entitled Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs located in the Pavillon de Marsan, the north-west end of the Palais du Louvre (fig. 4-1). Displaying nearly 1,700 photographic prints between January 16 and March 1, 1936, this event was one of the largest photography exhibitions ever held in France. As its title signals, the primary aim of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine was to illustrate the present state of contemporary photography on an international scale. Accordingly, the event’s organizing committee led by Peignot selected 1,109 works by contemporary photographers from over three thousand international submissions1 (fig. from 4-2 to 4-5). The exhibit included a considerable number of Parisian photographers closely connected to Peignot, such as Brassaï, Rémy Duval, Maurice Tabard, Pierre Boucher, Nora Dumas, André Kertész, and

Laure Albin Guillot. Furthermore, the exhibition involved those who resided outside France but frequently contributed to Photographie, including Erno Vadas, Hein Gorny, Herbert

Matter, and Edward Steichen. This inclusion reflected the cosmopolitanism characterizing the photo annual and the publications of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques. This section

1 Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1936), 1-79. Catalogue entry from 1 to 1109. The archives of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs preserve letters from France, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Luxembourg, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Russia, Czech, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Egypt. Photographers in Japan, Chine, and other Asian countries also sent their photographs to the show.

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moderne thus synthesized the content of Photographie in the last six years of its publication and Peignot’s effort to promote contemporary photography.

While independent photographers’ artistic tableaux constituted the principal feature of this section, it also contained photographs for purely utilitarian and documentary purposes. As

Jean Vétheuil described, this exhibition was conceived to “make an état of contemporary photography, as complete as possible, both from artistic and scientific points of view.”2

Rediscovered by avant-garde artists in the mid-1920s, photography as scientific document was recognized as an essential element of the medium’s contemporary development.

Scientific research institutes in Paris and other French cities loaned a collection of microphotographs, X-ray pictures and aerial and astronomy photographs to the exhibition.

The Archives photographiques d'art et d'histoire (then directed by Albin Guillot) of the

Bibliothèque nationale provided fifty-two photographic reproductions of historical monuments, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and objects d'art. The Musée d'Ethnographie of the Palais du Trocadéro sent pictures taken during past ethnographic expeditions organized by

Frenchmen that showcased various racial types.

In addition to this section moderne, the show’s program included a section rétrospective that presented 576 historical photographs in three rooms on the museum’s first floor (fig. 4-6). These rooms displayed the gamut of past photography: the earliest

Daguerreotypes executed in 1839, calotypes by Fox Talbot and David Octavius Hill, portraits by Nadar, Disdéri’s cartes de visite, art photography of Victorian England by Julia Margaret

2 Jean Vétheuil, “L'Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine,” La Revue de la photographie 34 (December 1935): 7. “Créer un état de la photographie contemporaine, aussi complet que possible, tant au point de vue artistique que scientifique, tel était le but de cette manifestation.”

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Cameron and Henry Peach Robinson, and the Chronophotographs by Eadweard Muybridge.

This section also displayed a few nineteenth-century cameras (fig. 4-7).3

This encompassing exhibit in the section rétrospective was made possible by 258 loans from great Parisian private collectors, namely Victor Barthélémy, André Dignimont,

André Gilles, and Georges Sirot.4 Two major photographic societies in Europe, the Société

Française de Photographie in Paris and London’s Royal Photographic Society, also contributed 254 works from their collections.5 Based on these comprehensive selections, the

Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine exhibited 1,692 works, according to the exhibition catalog (the actual number was higher; some catalogue entries contained multiple works under a single title).

This inclusive exhibit was the first occasion in which photography was officially exhibited as art pieces in its own right in a state-sponsored art museum in France.

Photographs in this exhibition were original photographic prints sent by international participants. Each work was carefully cased in a wooden frame and neatly hung on the museum’s walls, as if they were prints or paintings. In the century since the official announcement of its invention by François Arago in the Académie des Sciences in 1839, photography had not been the subject of an independent project in an art museum, except for a

3 Letter from Charles Peignot to Louis Metman, the assistant curator of Musée des Arts Décoratifs, February 13, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, “Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine” D1- 210.

4 Exposition internationale de la photographie contenporaine, 81-124. The numbers of their works and catalogue entry is as follows: Barthélémy, 121 articles (catalogue number 1117-1237); Dignimont, 47 articles (1274-1320); Gilles, 60 articles (1321-1380); and Sirot, 30 articles (1394-1423).

5 Ibid. SFP, 208 entries (1424-1631); and RPS, 46 entries (1632-1673).

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few occasions.6 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, opportunities and venues for hanging photographs were limited to the SFP salons in Paris, local photo-clubs, and marginal art galleries or relegated to special occasions, including the World’s Fairs. This

1936 exhibition thus institutionally legitimized the medium as an art form and treated the displayed works as art objects. Vétheuil also commented that it finally placed photography

“on its true rank”7 in French art and culture one hundred years after its invention, and thus

“the most important event that has ever been dedicated to the art of photography in France.”8

As such, this exhibition was a conclusion of a series of attempts made by Arts et métiers graphiques in the mid-1930s to consolide photography as an autonomous art.

However, even though this exhibition generated momentum for the institutionalization of photography in the French art museum, photography’s complete legitimization did not happen until the 1960s. The opening of the first photography museum in France, the Musée français de la photographie in Bièvres, occurred in 1964, followed by that of the Musée

Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône in 1972. The Centre Georges Pompidou and the

Musée d’Orsay officially introduced photography to their collections in 1977 and 1978, respectively. I argue that this delay was caused by an ambivalent attitude toward photography of those who promoted the medium’s art in the interwar period.

6 The same Pavillon de Marsan hosted the Exposition des photographies de guerre des armées alliées (Exhibition of war photography taken by allied forces) in 1916. However, this exhibition featured photography as documents rather than artworks.

7 Vétheuil, “L’Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine,” The exhibition placed photography “à son rang véritable.”

8 “Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine,” Arts et métiers graphiques 50 (December 1935): 65. The show “sera la manifestation la plus importante qui ait jamais été consacrée en France à l'art photographique.”

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This last chapter discusses the display of photography in mid- to late 1930s France by considering a complex relationship between photography and graphic art. It focuses on

Peignot’s involvement with two expositions internationales, the 1936 Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine in the Pavillon de Marsan and the

Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne, or Paris World’s

Fair in 1937.9 Peignot and other advocates of modern photography in interwar France mostly engaged in the graphic business, such as typography, printing, and publishing. I argue that their profession helped them discover photography in the mid-to late 1920s but also led to their indifference after photography expanded beyond a graphic context as an ironic result of their own effort to promote it the mid-1930s. Peignot’s engagement in these two expositions internationales clarifies this ambivalent position of photography in their business.

The Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine 1936

A Lukewarm Manifestation?

Although it was a commemorative event in the history of photography in France, the significance of the Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine has been

9 As Christopher Phillips’ influential 1982 study “The Judgment Seat of Photography” demonstrates, the ways that photographs are displayed reflects the medium’s changing status within a given institutional framework. Christopher Phillips, “The Judgment Seat of Photography,” October 22 (Autumn, 1982): 27-63. The photography exhibition became a serious subject of study in the 1980s for considering the fluctuating status of the medium. This was triggered by the increasing use of photography by conceptual artists in the late 1960s and the resulting incorporation of the medium into museum collections and the art market in the 1970s. Since then, art historians, curators, critics, and photographers including Phillips, Rosalind Krauss, Douglas Crimp, and Benjamin Buchloh in the United States, Wolfgang Kemp, Ute Eskildsen, and Ulrich Pohlmann in Germany, and the exhibition L'Invention d'un art held at the Pompidou Center in 1989 in France, have discussed photography’s relations to the art museum and its exhibitions. Most recently, Photoshow: Landmark Exhibitions that Defined the History of Photography (2014) offers an overview on the history of photography exhibition by listing and defining seminal exhibitions throughout the medium’s history. The latest issue of Transbordeur (2018) also took the photography exhibition as its subject. This field of study is still expanding.

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downplayed in previous studies because it was judged too eclectic and inconsistent. The

French photo historian Eléonore Challine considered the history for the institutionalization of photography in France by analyzing various attempts to establish a photography museum in the country. She provides comprehensive accounts of the ever-changing understanding of the medium as document, art, or cultural heritage, by carefully tracing conflicts, hesitance, and indetermination for the integration of photography into the country’s cultural institution between 1839 and 1945.

The exhibition in the Pavillon de Marsan is counted among a series of retrospective exhibitions held in the interwar period corresponding to the centenary of its invention.10 For instance, in 1925, the SFP led the Exposition rétrospective du centenaire de la photographie

(July 4-20, 1925). In 1933, or the Année Niépce, there was a pilgrimage to Niépce’s birthplace,

Chalon-sur-Saône, to pay homage to this inventor who had died a century earlier in 1833.

Georges Besson organized a retrospective, L'image photographique en France de Daguerre à nos jours, at Galerie Braun the same year (April 1-20, 1933). For the centennial of the medium’s official invention in 1939, the SFP hosted a ceremony at the Sorbonne, where Paul

Valéry delivered a speech in which he compared photography to literature and legitimized it as an equally intellectual and artistic form of expression.11

Though she acknowledges the contribution of the 1936 exhibition as the first art museum show of photography, Challine judges its retrospective section as a lukewarm event

10 Éléonore Challine, Une Histoire contrariée: Le musée de photographie en France (1839-1945) (Paris: Editions Macula, 2017), 421-8.

11 Paul Valéry, “The Centenary of Photography” (1937) in Classic Essays on Photography, ed. Alan Trachtenberg (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books), 191-198. The original title of his speech was “Discours du centenaire de la photographie.” The original French text is available in Etudes Photographiques 10 (November 2001). http://etudesphotographiques.revues.org/265

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that did not propose any significant and consistent narrative on the medium’s historical developments. The events at photography’s centenary coincided with the establishment of its history. As Vétheuil described, the 1936 exhibition was, in theory, conceived to “judge the distance pursued by the dark room over one hundred years” and proposed it “should provide its complete synthesis.”12 However, contrary to this ambition and the large number of displayed works, this exhibition did not provide any clear historical narrative on the medium’s development.

Although her points hold true, Challine does not discuss the exhibition’s contemporary section, which was the main part of this event. This section has also been regarded as lackluster due mainly to the conspicuous absence of canonical avant-garde photographers.

Most recently, the photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Maria

Morris Hambourg, wrote a short description on the show for a web-based project carried out in tandem with the MoMA exhibition Object: Photo, Modern Photographs, The Thomas

Walther Collection 1909-1949 (2014).13 Hambourg states that the 1936 show, despite its ambition, lacked those who had advanced photography’s artistic and instrumental possibilities in the 1920s, namely the protagonists of the German New Vision and Russian Constructivism, including Max Burchartz, Lucia Moholy, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and Aleksandr

Rodchenko.14 These artists’ radical explorations of the medium’s specificity in the early to mid-1920s had no place in the Pavillon de Marsan. By contrast, the exhibition was filled with

12 Vétheuil, “L’Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine,” 7. “De plus, pour juger la distance parcourue depuis un siècle par la chambre noire, une section de rétrospective devait compléter cette synthèse.”

13 Object:Photo, Modern Photographs, The Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2016). https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/#home

14 Maria Morris Hambourg, “Exposition Internationale de la Photographie Contemporaine at Musée des Arts Décoratifs.” https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/exhibitions/30.html

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typical artistic tableaux embraced by Arts et métiers graphiques. Hambourg ascribes the predominance of these beautiful but uninspiring photographs to the political and cultural rappel à l’ordre, following a standard scholarly approach to photography in mid- to late

1930s France.15

However, as the last chapter demonstrated, this overused dichotomy of avant-gardism and the rappel à l’ordre does not sufficiently explain photography in this period, nor the events coordinated by Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques. First, the avant-garde artists

Hambourg names had long been absent in the essentially eclectic mainstream photographic scene in France since the early 1930s. Furthermore, Russian Constructivists did not have any significant exposure in the French media, except for magazines and organizations directly associated with the Communist party, such as Regards. In addition, the New Vision, and its photographic experimentations, had lost appeal almost immediately after its enthusiastic reception around 1930. The prominent art critic of L’Art vivant, Jacques Guenne’s comments on the show illustrate this distance from the artistic radicalism of avant-garde. Though

Guenne criticized the exhibition for its weak international participation, his list of absent important figures, including Sasha Stone, Martin Munkacsi, Georges Hoyningen-Huene, and

Emil Otto Hoppé, is a striking contrast to Hambourg’s.16 This eclectic lineup clearly indicates that avant-garde artists and their experimentations had not even been considered as potential and essential components of the show attempting to make an état of contemporary photography in the mid-1930s.

15 Similar claims were made by French scholars and curators. In particular, Quentin Bajac, the former director of MoMA’s photography department and the curator of Object:Photo, laid out this framework in Quentin Bajac, “Paris à la découverte de la photographie moderne, 1929-1939” in Voici Paris: Modernités photographiques, 1920-1950 (Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2012), 27-29.

16 Jacques Guenne, “La photographie vivante, Les Dix,” L'Art vivant 201 (March 1936): 37.

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As these two studies suggest, this exhibition has not been sufficiently examined according to its organizer’s intent. While Challine undermines the main content of the event from French national historical point of view, Hambourg misses its local conditions because of the avant-garde centered perspective fostered in the United States.17 The most conspicuous shortcoming of these previous studies is that they failed to consider Peignot’s works in this period, even though they did not fail to mention his name as its initiator and organizer. As I discussed in the last chapter, Peignot made efforts to establish photography as an independent form of art by intentionally distinguishing it from a photography in service of graphic art used for illustrated magazines and publicity designs. It is essential to understand how this idea was implemented in the exhibition’s installation and treatment of works, as well as the contemporary context.

Interaction of the Page and the Wall

The display of photography in the interwar period was closely connected to graphic art and printed matters. As paper media had a revolutionary function as a new, truly populist and democratic form of art, so modernist exhibitions of photographic images appropriated this mode of presentation. Employing visual methods and strategies of mise en page in publicity designs and illustrated press for the display of photography, exhibition space became a three dimensional version of printed media. The profusion of photomurals most clearly represented

17 The 2016 MoMA exhibition and its website are important scholarly contributions that facilitate the consideration of the history of photography on a transnational scale. The show’s web database, which is actually the main part of this project that includes the exhibition, is a pioneering effort to map interactions and exchanges between photographers and events throughout Europe and America between 1909 and 1949. It reflects the international links and movements of photographers, critics, and editors. This project by MoMA is an attempt to visualize the transnational dynamics of photography in this period. However, it only represents events, photographers, and publications that has been considered in the avant-garde-centered narrative formed by the museum. France’s presence, particularly regarding the topics I examine in this dissertation, is underrepresented.

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this paradigm. In photomurals, photographs were enlarged, montaged, and then integrated into architectural supports, transforming the traditional perceptional mode of images and accepted ways to hang art works. Such mural displays constituted what the Spanish curator Jorge

Ribalta calls “public photographic spaces” and became a means to directly engage with a much broader public.18 Responding to the growing collective desire to be educated by images, innovations in industrial production, and the necessity to engage the masses in political causes, this form of photography exhibition rapidly spread over Europe and was first internationally recognized in Pressa in 1928 (fig. 1-11). Here, Lissitzky laid out the essential visual idioms for incorporating photographic images directly into three dimensional space. This culminated in the Paris World’s Fair in 1937 (fig. 4-8), where photomural became standard and almost obligatory content for each pavilion.19

The influence of printed matter was also prevalent in exhibitions that hung photographic prints as physical objects. Most conspicuously, the 1929 Film und Foto organized by Deutscher Werkbund in Stuttgart provides an important comparison to the exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan. Each photograph was displayed for aesthetic appreciation, but the organization and installation of Film und Foto (fig. 4-9) were driven by printed pages. As Olivier Lugon mentions, this exhibition transposed the methods of page layout seen in illustrated newspapers and weeklies into architectural space.20 Although the works are displayed independently, many were originally intended to be published in ink in

18 Jorge Ribalta, “Introduction” in Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to the Family of Man (Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemorani de Barcelona, 2008), 11-26.

19 For detailed discussions of photomurals, see Romy Golan, Muralnomad: The Paradox of Wall Painting, Europe 1927-1957 (New Haven and London : Yale University Press, 2009).

20 Olivier Lugon, “La Photographie des typographes,” Etudes photographiques 20 (June 2007): 100-119.

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mass media. The repetition of the same images seen in the Soviet section curated by Lissitzky and in the room dedicated to John Heartfield (fig. 4-10) indicates these images were treated not as unique objects but as reproducible printed matters.21 Most sections hung photographs on scaffolds forming grids and grills to enclose displayed pictures. This method offered a standardized framework for displaying images embraced by avant-garde artists, including

Moholy-Nagy and Jan Tschichold. The last pages of Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei, Fotografie,

Film, for instance, offer a model of expressive layout according to a creative combination of grid patters (fig. 2-41). The installation of Film und Foto, which involved these artists as organizers, was an embodiment of these new understandings and proposals for layout. In addition to the arrangement of images, captions with relatively large fonts (fig. 4-9 and 4-10) placed on the wall played the role of headlines in newspapers and magazines. Succinct sentences, such as “Where does photography’s development go?” in the room with historical photography curated by Moholy-Nagy or “Use photography as a weapon” accompanying

Heartfield’s political photomontages, summarized the content of each room, reflecting the connection between text and images in illustrated printed media of the period.22

Compared to this page-driven installation in Film und Foto, the 1936 exhibition offered a different mode of hanging, in which works were treated as art objects destined for the wall rather than components of the page. Participants of this show created their works as exhibition pieces, responding to the call for submission specifically made for this occasion.

The photographs were thus conceived as original pieces and not to be reproduced, which contrasted sharply with Film und Foto. In the Pavillon de Marsan, hanging locations were not

21 For a detailed discussion of Heartfield’s room, see Andrés Mario Zervigón, “The Peripatetic Viewer at Hertfield’s Film und Foto Exhibition Room,” October 150 (Fall 2014): 27-48.

22 Lugon, “La Photographie des typographes.”

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regulated by the grid scaffolds; instead, prints were attached directly to the museum walls in the same manner as paintings. Each work was framed in plain pinewood (fig. 4-5) to not distract the viewer, which facilitated comparisons between photographs.23 The uniformity of the simple wooden frame precluded any hierarchy between displayed photographs and shed equal light on each picture. There were no enlarged captions serving as headline, but each framed work came with a small label that contained only a number. This number enabled the visitor to identify the work by referring to a list in the exhibition catalogue but did not obstruct the work’s visual merit. Such contrasts from Film und Foto indicate Peignot’s position toward photography in the mid-1930s.

Process of Organization

This 1936 exhibition’s organization process also underscores photography’s separation from the graphic art context. Peignot first conceived this exhibition in 1933, and its realization took almost three years. According to letters preserved in the archives of the

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Peignot first contacted the museum’s assistant curator, Louis

Metman, on May 24, 1933, asking to host an exhibition. Although one might expect that

Peignot demanded an event entirely dedicated to photography, his initial proposal was to hold

“the first official exhibition to show the existence of graphic art in France.”24 In the same letter, he specified that the planned event would be composed of ten sections for the various

23 Guenne, “La photographie vivante, Les Dix,” 37. Guennes makes this point as he reviews a group exhibition of ten photographers held at gallery Jules Leleu. These ten photographers included Brassaï, Pierre Boucher, Nora Dumas, Ergy Landau, François Kolllar, André Kertész, Roger Schall, Ylla, Tabard, and René Zuber. Guennes says this exhibition also employed monotonous frames, writing, “[C]es dix artistes ont souhaité d'exposer leurs œuvres sur des panneaux semblables, afin qu'aucun des participants ne soit avantagé aux dépens des autres.”

24 Letter from Peignot to Meman, May 24, 1933. Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-210. He asks “une exposition de ce genre, qui aurait l'avantage d'être la première manifestation officielle de l'existence des arts graphiques.”

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practices of graphic art, publishing, and printing, such as “typographic studies and presentation of new letter designs,” “the progress of printing technique,” and “pages of publicity works.”25 He intended to limit the exhibit to the latest works by French artists and industries and to hold the show every two or three years to showcase contemporary developments and achievements of graphic art in the country. In short, Peignot first planned an exhibition that reflected the primary interests and concerns of Arts et métiers graphiques.

Peignot’s selection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs as a potential venue certainly resulted from his affiliation with the Union des Artistes Modernes (U.A.M.). The museum had hosted the Union’s annual salons in 1930 and 1932 (fig. 4-11). Grouped around avant-garde architects, furniture designers, and graphic artists, including Robert Mallet-Stevens, René

Herbst, Charlotte Perriand, and Le Corbusier, this organization contributed to the development of modern graphic and applied art in France. Peignot first joined the group’s exhibition in 1932 as an “invited member,” and this is undoubtedly when he established his contact with the museum’s curators.26 He remained associated with the union throughout the interwar period. He joined its fourth annual salon in 1934,27 and his name is also listed as an

“active member” in the group’s manifesto “Pour l'Art moderne” released in the same year.28

25 Ibid. Peignot proposed the following ten categories: “1°- les livres de luxe, typographie et illustration, 2°- les couvertures de livres courants, 3°- les partitions musicales, 4°- les essais de typographie et présentation de caractères nouveaux, 5°- couvertures de magazines, 6°- pages de publicité: a) dans la grande presse, b) dans les magazines, 7°- les affiches, 8°- les couvertures de catalogues: a) de luxe, b) courants, 9°- les progrès des techniques d'impression (épreuves), 10°- Petite section de photographie.”

26 Poster for the 1932 salon, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Fonds René Herbst, ARCH- HERBS/UAM/Brochures, Catalogues, Invitations.

27 Louis Chéronnet, “Le IVe salon de l'U.A.M.,” Arts et métiers graphiques 36 (July 1933): 49-51.

28 Louis Chéronnet, “Pour l'Art moderne: Cadre de la vie contemporaine,” 1934. Peignot’s name is listed as a “membre actif” in 1934. Chéronnet’s text was reproduced in René Herbst, ed., 25 Années U.A.M: 1930-1955 (Paris: Editions du Salon des Arts Ménagers, 1956), 17-24.

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Peignot’s most important and closest collaborators, Maximilien Vox and A. M. Cassandre, were also adherents of the group.

Peignot was likely not satisfied with the U.A.M exhibitions, which did not encompass the art of printing and publishing in its entirety. The graphic art section of U.A.M’s salons concentrated on exhibiting artists’ finished products, including posters and book designs.

However, this was insufficient for Peignot, who was concerned with not only the final works but also the development of processes, techniques, and even machines that supported and changed this field. The ten groups he proposed to Metman testify to Peignot’s ambition to have a more comprehensive manifestation of printing and publishing than the U.A.M. salon.

In this regard, his initial suggestion to Metman in 1933—submitted a year after his first participation in the U.A.M. salon—should be considered both an alternative to and an extension of the union’s shows.

In this first proposal, Peignot included photography among the suggested ten groups because it had, by this time, become the essential elements of graphisme and specialty of Arts et métiers graphiques. However, Peignot discretely listed it as a “small section” in the last of the exhibit’s fields. Moreover, he specified that this section aimed “only to remind that photography had found its place among the Graphic Arts.”29 This comment indicates that

Peignot did not intend to present photographic prints independently but to handle them as one of the various components of the art of printing. Although Peignot imposed a limitation on the kind of photography to be exhibited in the show, this does not mean he casually dismissed its value as an autonomous field of creative practice. In fact, describing this “small section,” he

29 Letter from Peignot to Metman, May 24, 1933, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. This show was “uniquement pour rappeler que la photographie trouve sa place dans les Arts Graphiques.”

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claimed photography would need “an exhibition for itself.”30 This additional comment proves that he was making a clear distinction between photography as an independent field of artistic expression and photography in the service of graphisme.

As the intentional separation between these two kinds of photography was established around 1934 in Arts et métiers graphiques, as seen in chapter 3, Peignot changed his initial plan for a graphic art show. After Metman’s reply to Peignot’s first proposal in May 1933, the archives of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs had no communication between the two until

February 13, 1935. Thus, when Peignot and Metman decided to change their direction is unclear. However, in the February 1935 letter, Peignot mentioned that the exhibition would focus on photography and expressed his confidence in its success. Therefore, the decision to organize a photography exhibition was made some time between these two letters.

During this period, Peignot undertook two projects in which he dealt with photographic prints as physical objects for exhibition and collection. The first was his participation as a juror in the Salon international d’art photographique organized by the SFP in 1934. As discussed in chapter 3, this salon pushed Photographie toward conservatism and the appreciation of photographs independent of graphic contexts. The other project was

Peignot's contact with the widow of Gabriel Cromer in the same year. Cromer was one of the most influential figures in the interwar French photographic scene. He was the first private collector of photography in France and the leading advocate for the establishment of a photography museum, as I discuss further in this chapter. Almost immediately upon Cromer’s death in 1934, the directeur général des Beaux-Arts, Georges Huisman, entrusted Peignot to contact and negotiate with Mme Cromer to persuade her to donate the collection to the French

30 Ibid. “Elle nécessiterait à elle seule, une exposition.”

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state.31 These incidents certainly stimulated Peignot’s recognition of photography as an object as well as an idea for an exhibition of photographic prints. In addition to his collaboration with the SFP’s salon in Photographie 1935 (published in 1934), Peignot organized exhibitions for each annual, beginning in 1931. These were held at Parisian art galleries, including the Galerie d'art contemporain, Galerie de Pleïade, and Galerie Bonjean. He also directed a traveling show in 1935 that toured through Chalons-sur-Saône, Reims, and

Lausanne.32 Such experiences contributed to his ambition to hold a large-scale show at a museum venue.

Once they settled on the focus for their exhibition, Peignot and Metman started the process of organization. They finished nominating members of the patronage committee by

October 1935 and succeeded in securing the cooperation of high government officials and luminaries from the French intellectual milieu. The committee included Mario Roustan, the

Minister of National Education; Georges Huisman, the Directeur général des Beaux-Arts;

Huisman’s future successor Paul Léon; Louis Lumière; and Paul Valéry.33 The participation of these politically and culturally influential figures indicates that the time was ideal for a commemoration of photography on the national and institutional levels.

31 Challine, Une Histoire contrarié, 329-330.

32 Letter from Peignot to Metman, February 13, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

33 Peignot and Metman had finished forming the patronage committee by October 14, 1935. A letter stamped on this date reported that they received approvals from them. The other members include Louis Rollin (Ministre des Colonies), Léon Bailby (Président du Syndicat de la Presse parisienne), René Baschet (Membre de l'Institut, Vice-Président de la Presse périodique), Raoul Dautry (Directeur général des Chemins de fer de l'Etat), Jean Marx (Chefs du Servide des Œuvres Françaises à l'Etrangers, au Ministère des Affaires Etrangères), Tochon Lepage (Président de la Chambre syndicale des Industries et du Commerce photographique). Exposition Internationale de la photographie contemporaine, 5.

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Peignot and Metman also appointed admission committee members, who selected the works to be exhibited. Led by Peignot as its general secretary,34 this committee was composed of those who were directly connected to the venue and organizers. Most of members had been closely associated with Peignot through Arts et métiers graphiques, Photographie, or other publications by Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques. Two of the most publicly recognized

French photographers, Albin Guillot and Emmanuel Sougez, had often been featured in the company’s magazines. The art critic Louis Chéronnet regularly contributed his essays on both photography and graphic art to these publications. The vice president of the SFP, Claude de

Santeuil should have met Peignot at the 1934 salon. The prominent art and photography critic

Abel Bonnard later authored the preface to a portfolio of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques,

28 études de nus, edited by Duval. The same photographer, Duval, also joined in the selection process as the committee’s secretary. In addition, the committee included the photography collector André Dignimont, the president of the Société des Amis du Louvre Albert S.

Henraux, the director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs François Carnot, and the conservative painter André Denoyer de Segonzac.35 Segonzac was one of the French artists who

34 The other coordinator of the event, Metman, played only a secondary role in providing institutional and administrative support as someone associated with the national museum, by making use of his contact with government officials and political figures. While Metman principally worked behind the scenes, Peignot played the triple role of initiator, juror, and curator of the event to determine the exhibition’s content and outcome. He even took charge of the design and printing of the related paper materials, including the exhibition catalogue and poster. On the maquette for the catalogue preserved in the museum’s archives Peignot gave detailed instructions and corrections on the selection and layout of the typographical arrangement on its cover. Maquette of the exhibition catalogue, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-209. The archives also preserve the original photograph for the poster, which employed a photograph of the Pavillon de Marsan taken by his close friend the photographer, Duval, in combination with the arrangement of letters in Europe owned by Deberny et Peignot. This typeface was, by this time, associated with photography, mainly because of the success of Photographie 1930, which had used Europe for its cover. Michel Wlassikoff, “Furuta, Europe and Photography” (based on a paper presented at the symposium Photo-graphics, at Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 2007, article publihsed online), http://www.jeudepaume.org/pdf/Photographisme_GB.pdf., 35-45.See also: Letter from Peignot to Metman, November 6, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-210. In this letter, Peignot tells Metman about the execution of brochures and posters with the photograph by Duval and asks the latter for approval.

35 Exposition Internationale de la photographie contemporaine, 6.

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represented the contemporary retour à la terre, which affected the content of Photographie in the mid-1930s.36 The participation of this conservative and renowned painter underscores the changing recognition of photography as an independent form of art rather than art’s "humble servant."

Displaying Originals

The exhibition’s installation and organization were based on the clear distinction between photography and printed matter. However, the show’s content was closely related to

Peignot’s publishing project. The exhibition’s contemporary section reflected the tastes of

Arts et métiers graphiques because he based the event on his international contacts established through Photographie. In a letter written in February 1935, Peignot assured Metman that the exhibition would be definitely successful because of “the quality of the documents” he was going to gather thanks to his “contact with the best photographers of the world every year.”37

He actually sent the call for submissions, written in three languages (French, German, and

English), to participants in the annual’s past issues (fig. 4-12).

However, the reliance on Photographie did not contradict the principle of the event because the album was closer to an art exhibition on paper than modern mass printed media.

Although albums belonged to the same visual-centered paradigm of the interwar period that produced illustrated magazines and wall-sized photographic advertisements—thus photomurals and Film und Foto—the album was based on contemplative and aesthetic

36 Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and Politics in France between the Wars (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995). See especially “2 Rusticizing the Modern,” 23-60.

37 Letter from Peignot to Metman, February 13, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. “[L]a qualité même des documents que je suis à même de réunir étant donné que je suis chaque année en relation avec tous les meilleurs photographes du monde.”

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appreciation of printed images, as I examined in chapter 2. As Vétheuil clearly stated, “Can we confuse a reportage with a series of images meditated for a long time? A publicity agency with the efforts of a solitary artist?”38 Photographie thus applied the traditional mode of appreciating artworks, while mass media and exhibitions attempted to break conventions.

Photographie as an exhibition on paper was particularly beneficial for progressive photographers. The salon of the SFP provided a rare site for the display of original prints on the walls. However, most modernists were not accepted in this conservative organization, especially in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. For example, when Krull showed her works with extreme-view angles to the SFP members, they rejected them and advised her to learn to hold the camera still.39 As Gisèle Freund recalls, Photographie provided the progressives with an alternative “means to publish their research” away from the conservative exhibition venues.40

However, Peignot exhibition in 1936 distanced itself even from photo albums in its treatment of photographs. In his article on the show published in La Revue de la photographie in 1935, Vétheuil provided a critical judgment of the album as a form of display: “They

[albums] offer an excellent selection of beautiful prints. But it is difficult, leafing through them, to have an idea, even a slight one, of the production of a single artist! The variety in

38 Vétheuil, “Considération sur l'évolution de la photographie” in Photographie 1935 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1934), 123. “Mais, peut-on confondre un reportage avec une suite d'images longuement méditées? Une agence de publicité avec les efforts d'un artiste isolé?”

39 Germaine Krull, La Vie mène la danse (Pars: Textuel, 2015), 188.

40 Gisèle Freund, “La Photographie moderne,” p.2, typewritten manuscript, Fond Freund, FND163, IMEC (Institut mémoires de l'édition contemporaine), Caen.

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these potpourris is pleasant to the eye but bad for the memory.”41 Here, while acknowledging the album’s appreciation of aesthetic quality of photography, he critiqued it as an incomplete medium because it could not provide an overview of the œuvre of a single artist. This discussion is based on Photographie as a collective volume that contains works by a number of photographers.

More importantly, however, this criticism was based on Vétheuil’s emphasis on the distinction between reproductions and original prints. In the same text, he insisted on the establishment of “sanctuaries where the public can really see photographs, that is to say original prints, where they can buy these thin leaves that an author has charged with their hopes and with their trembling emotion, and that do not resemble in any respect reproductions, because the reproductions have lost their soul.”42 His statement underscores a typical tendency to see photography as its author’s personal expression. He proposes that the exhibition be a place to appreciate vintage prints to faithfully convey the creator’s original intention and self. Although photo albums allow one to appreciate printed images, they remain reproductions on paper. Their material dimension, tactility, and texture are determined neither by the photographs themselves nor by the photographers who took them, but by the book medium and its editors. By contrast, exhibitions enable the appreciation of photographic prints’ own physical quality. They thus confront viewers with a direct reflection of each author’s creative mind. Vétheuil’s embrace of the photograph as a physical object represents

41 Vétheuil, “L'Exposition Internationale de la photographie contemporaine,” 7. “Ils [albums] offrent un choix excellent de belles épreuves. Mais qu'il est difficile en les feuilletant de se faire une idée, même approchée, de la production d'un seul artiste! La diversité de ces pots-pourris est agréable à l'œil mais néfaste à la mémoire.”

42 Ibid. “[Des] sanctuaires où le public peut voir réellement des photographies, c'est-à-dire des épreuves originales, où il peut acheter ces minces feuilles qu'un auteur a chargé de ces espoirs et de ses frémissements et qui ne ressemblent en rien aux reproductions, car celle-ci ont perdu leur âme.”

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an important change of focus in photography’s display from reproductions on the page to originals on the wall.

This outlook is embodied by the exhibition’s contemporary section, in which works were organized according to the photographer's names. One of the installation shots (fig. 4-2) displays nine works by Edward Steichen, including the iconic portrait of Paul Robson (this work was also reproduced in the first Photographie in 1930 and La Revue de la photographie), hung in three lines and forming a single unit. This group is flanked by three portraits by Rogi

André on the left and disparate works ranging from a night cityscape to an animal photograph by Roger Schall on the right. These blocks’ distance from one another is wide enough to divide each authorial unit. This pattern contrasts with the conventional salon display, where numerous photographic prints are stacked vertically on the same wall with little empty space between them (fig. 4-13). Salon exhibitions also grouped works according to their creators’ nationalities. Critics often abstracted and identified collective national tendencies from this type of installation. The 1936 show broke with such conventions for collective appreciation and analysis and emphasized the individual photographer’s style.

The recognition of photographs as physical objects is also apparent in the call for submissions. Photographers were required to send original prints that had “never been exhibited in France.” The call also specified the size of acceptable paper mounts. The administrators proposed four options: 24 by 30, 30 by 40, 40 by 50, and 50 by 60 centimeters.43 This rule was not only intended to control the material dimensions of

43 The call for submission, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-209, see article 6 of this document about the size of paper mount.

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submissions to facilitate their organization, but it also offered photographers the freedom to reflect on the ideal presentation size for each image.44

The evaluation of photographs as objects led to their marketing, as is stated in

Vétheuil’s critique. The call for submissions stipulated conditions for the sale of the photographs during the exhibition period.45 Therefore, the event was conceived not only as a place for display but also for sales. The insistence on selling photographs also emerged as a reaction against the profusion of printed media. Vétheuil criticized modern photographers’ tendency to treat photographs as trivial and reproducible images, which he identified as the most critical reason people did not buy photographs in the same manner as prints and paintings. According to him, modern photographers tried to distance photography from the past art context. For that purpose, they glued photographs onto cardboard supports and pinned them directly onto the wall as if they were publicity editors at work. Vétheuil did not outright reject this strategy for protecting “true photography” from the imitation of painting but did state it would cause the loss of potential buyers.46 Photographers’ mistreatment of photographic prints, according to Vétheuil, corresponded to their “error in psychology.”

Photographers treated their works as if they were print-centered media and felt proud to see

44 If you look at installation shots, displayed photographic prints mostly correspond to these predetermined sizes specified in the call for submissions. Thus it is likely that the submitted works were exhibited as they were, without the manipulation of their dimensions. It is also noteworthy that not only organizers but also submitters handled their works as objects. There were numerous instances in which submitters demanded the return of their photographs so that they could send the same prints to another exhibition, which indicate that these photographs were handled as unique objects. See, for instance, Letter from Chambre Syndicale Française de la Photographie to Musée des Arts Décoratifs, December 27, 1935. Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-210.

45 Call for Submission, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. “9°—La vente des œuvres, au cas où elle serait autorisée par l'exposant, sera assurée par les soins d'un agent qui se réserve une remise de 20 % sur les prix marqués.”

46 According to Vétheuil, it was only Laure Albin Guillot who placed her works in frames and succeeded in reaching clients and collectors. Jean Vétheuil, “Sur les murs de votre chambre,” Photo-ciné-graphie 23 (January 1935): 2.

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them reproduced. Photographs in publication could, in theory, multiply infinitely and, accordingly, would lose their commercial value. Instead, Vétheuil recommended putting a serial number on each print and making only limited editions, or even unique prints, as “the rarity of work increases its artistic power.”47

This gradual shift from printed reproductions in the bound medium to original photographic prints was sporadically seen in the publications of Editions Arts et Métiers

Graphiques in the 1930s. Maurice Cloche’s Alphabet (fig. 2-53) most significantly represented this focus because it contained twenty-six original silver gelatin photographs.

Two portfolios of photography by Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques—Femmes, with twenty nude photographs by Sasha Stone (1932) (fig. 4-14), and 28 études de nus, with works by such leading figures as Sougez, Albin Guillot, Dumas, Man Ray, and Boucher, edited by

Duval (1936) (fig. 4-15)—also offer transitional attempts at making photographs objects for display and possession. These are both collections of nude photographs composed of independent heliogravure plates on gloss-finished paper. Because of their reflective, smooth surfaces and relatively large size, 24 by 31 centimeters (the same format as Arts et métiers graphiques and Photographie), these plates appear as actual photographic prints hung in salons and exhibitions of the period. These volumes are not bound, which enabled the owner to place them in frames as independent photographic works and display them on the wall. The

1936 exhibition and these publications indicate that appreciation and reception of photography were gradually changing to embrace photographic works, with their “cult value.”

47 Ibid. “Hélas! la rareté d'une œuvre augmente son pouvoir artistique!”

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The Retrospective Section: For the Preservation of Photography

The embrace of original photographs seen in the contemporary section was also the same in the retrospective part but manifested in a more nationalistic way. Corresponding to the centenary of the medium, this situation indicates photographs existed as objects, which led to an idea to preserve them as French national property. As Challine clearly observes, this ambition entailed a variety of attempts to legitimize photography as worthy cultural heritage.

For instance, critics, scholars, and photographers aspired to write histories of the medium in the interwar period. A member of the SFP, Georges Potonniée, made the first important effort with his Histoire de la découverte de la photographie (Editions Paul Montel, 1925). In the book’s preface, Potonniée explains that histories of the medium written in France had been extremely cursory and narrow in scope, thus, needed to consult German and English books.

However, these books were not easily accessible because of a lack of French translations. He then addressed a nationalistic motive for writing a history of the medium:

Moreover, foreign authors, as is natural, have particularly known and described the works by their compatriots. This is to the detriment of our inventors. And since they cannot know much of the details of its discovery—which took place in France— because the documents, which remained in our country, have not been published, these writers are not exempt from errors. The history of photography is essentially French. It is a Frenchman, Niépce, who invented it; it is a Frenchman, Daguerre, who revealed it. . . . Isn't it right that France reaps the glory?48

Following this nationalistic take, the idea of a photography museum started to gain popularity. In 1925, Cromer was the first to address this idea. He was the leading advocate of

48 Georges Potonniée, Historie de la découverte de la photographie (Paris: Paul Montel, 1925), 6. “De plus, les auteurs étrangers, comme il est naturel, ont connu surtout et décrit les travaux de leurs compatriotes. C'est au détriment de nos inventeurs. Et comme beaucoup de détails de la découverte—qui eut lieu en France—ne pouvaient leur être connus parce que les documents, demeurés dans notre pays, n'ont pas été publiés, ces écrivains ne sont pas exempts d'erreurs. C'est que l'histoire de la photographie est essentiellement française. C'est un Français, Niépce, qui l'a inventé; c'est un Français, Daguerre, qui l'a divulguée. . . N'est-il pas juste qu'elle en recueille la gloire?”

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this project and actively published on the subject between 1922 and his death in 1934. In 1925, like Potonniée, he claimed that the invention, development, and perfection of the medium were undertaken by Frenchmen and consequently declared photography French property and cultural heritage.49 Based on this nationalistic premise, he urged French people to “raise its monument.” He asks “And wouldn't the most beautiful monument be a museum of photography, which would collect its writings, its cameras, and the results it has obtained, each with the name of its author and the date of its creation?”50 Here, Cromer envisioned an encompassing institution of photography that included not only photographs but also documentation, studies, and equipment. This ambitious project would preserve the medium in its entirety.

Following Cromer, critics and photographers made similar claims for a photography museum throughout the interwar period. However, no specialized and exclusive museum, neither as an organization nor as an actual building, was established in interwar France except for some compromising and incomplete projects. For instance, in 1927, Cromer was put in charge of the reorganization of the Collection de la Photographie et Cinématographie, the photography collection housed in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Though the

Conservatoire owned a considerable number of nineteenth-century photographs, it remained disorganized, without any inventory or classification of its content as Potonniée had described.

To improve this situation, the Conservatoire asked Cromer and the SFP to intervene so it

49 Gabriel Cromer, “Il faut créer un musée de la Photographie. Où doit-il être? Que doit-il être? Quelles pourraient être ses premières richesse?” Bulletin de la Société française de photographie 1 (January 1925): 14-19.

50 Ibid., 15. “Et le plus beau monument ne serait-il pas un musée de la photographie, dans lequel se trouveraient réunis leurs écrits, leurs appareils, les résultats qu'ils ont obtenus, portant chacun le nom de leur auteur, la date de sa création?”

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could open the collection to the public.51 Although it was successfully inaugurated on March

11, 1927, the collection occupying several rooms in the Conservatoire building was far from a

“museum.” Potonniée did not hide his dissatisfaction with this outcome, exclaiming that “the medium required not a section in the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, but a Museum” and insisting on the intervention of public authorities to realize this goal.52

The 1936 exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan marked an important step in this development by placing the medium into a public art museum. However, the display did not follow the ideas developed by these critics. Both Potonniée and Cromer—and their followers including Pierre Liercourt, who published a similar essay in 193753— proposed displaying photographs according to their historical and technological developments, and many retrospective exhibitions held in this period followed their principle. By contrast, the 1936 exhibition arranged historical photographs based on two different criteria. Unlike the author- based hanging in the contemporary section of the same show, the display in the retrospective part was first arranged according to the collectors’ names (fig. 4-6). This curation followed the wishes of the SFP, and other private collectors, who hoped to prevent their collections from becoming dispersed in the show.54 In each collector’s section, displayed works were

51 Georges Potonniée, “Inauguration officielle des Collections de la Photographie et de la Cinématographie au Conservatoire des Arts & Métiers: Avant la Cérémonie,” Bulletin de la Société française de photographie et cinématographie 173 (March 1927): 59. He describes that the objects in the collection were classified according to their chronology and technique, dated, and attached with a label that provided basic information. In addition, for the inauguration, calls for cooperation was sent out to science research institutions, photo-clubs, and collectors. Their donations and temporary rents remarkably enriched the Conservatoire’s collection of historical photographs.

52 Ibid. “On lui devait, non une section dans le Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, mais un Musée de la Photographie.”

53 Pierre Liercourt, “Le Futur musée de la Photographie,” Photo-Illustrations 5 (1934): 9-10.

54 Challine, Une Histoire contrariée, 423. Contrasting installation shots of both the section moderne and section rétrospective, one immediately recognized that the displays in the two sections were utterly different, as if they were two independent projects. While the contemporary exhibit individually framed each photograph, the

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then thematically hung under such subjects as “History of Paris by Photography,”

“Celebrities,” and “Second Empire.”55 The installation was thus based on an idea to group photographs as historical documents, or images, rather than the testimony of its mechanical and technological developments.

This thematic hanging was advocated by Louis Chéronnet who developed his own theory of a photography museum in the introductory essay to Photographie 1933-34 (1933).

This volume, published in the Année Niépce, opens with his article, which had a timely title:

“Pour un musée de la photographie” (fig. 4-16). Following the claims made by Potonniéee and Cromer, Chéronnet insisted building a photography museum was necessary and the public authorities should intervene in this process. Although his essay restates many points laid out by his precursors, it provides a different categorization and classification system. Chéronnet suggested arranging photographs according to genres and subjects. In conceiving a pedagogic museum for both novice photographers and those completely ignorant of the medium’s technical means, he judged his precursors’ system too confusing and specialist: “Neither classification by technical preceding nor that by characteristic period, which creates a forced continuity, would be acceptable in rooms opened to both novices and a large public.”56

retrospective rooms grouped several works together within a single frame. This difference is primarily due to the material condition of the displayed works. Old photographs exist as historical objects with fixed dimensions. Thus, their size is not modifiable unless one reproduces them. In particular, such works as Daguerreotypes were essentially unique, rather than reproducible media. These historical photographs, many of them originally conceived for domestic consumption, were also relatively small, thus many could be placed in a single frame. In addition, the clustered installation was inevitable because there were only three rooms to accommodate more than five hundred pictures loaned by several collectors.

55 Letter from Peignot toMetman, February 13, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

56 Louis Chéronnet, “Pour un musée de la photographie” in Photographie 1933-34 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1933), n.p. “On peut penser que ni des classement par procédés techniques, ni celui par époques caractéristiques, créant forcément des solutions de continuité, ne conviendraient à des salles ouvertes à la fois aux initiés et au grand public.”

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Based on this concept of a more democratized photography museum than Cromer’s professional and specialized institute, Chéronnet suggested that a “methodic classification following the evolution of genres, which can also easily include a subcategory of nationality, would be more satisfactory and attractive.”57 His categorization included not only such basic genres as “portrait,” “nude,” and “landscape,” but also newly-established and reevaluated areas of photography in the interwar period, namely, “reportage,” “scientific documents,” and a “diverse” rubric category that contained publicity shots, postcards, and other applications of photography in print media.58 Chéronnet planned to include all the photographic practices that had come to dominate people’s daily lives.

His thesis certainly inspired Peignot’s conception of this exhibition and provided a reference for its actual organization in both the retrospective and the contemporary sections.

Peignot first planned to arrange the show’s content according to genre and subject groups appropriated from Chéronnet’s proposal. The call for submission to the exhibition announced its categorization of acceptable works:

a) News and Information photographs. b) Portraits. c) Nudes. d) Landscapes. e) Animals. f) Advertising photographs. g) Photographic virtuosities. h) Scientific photography (Medical, Radio… etc.) i) Aerial and Submarine Views. j) Moving Picture photography. k) Photographs of works of art. 59

57 Ibid. “Un classement méthodique suivant l'évolution des genres, pouvant, en outre, aisément comporter un sous-classement par nationalités, paraît bien plus satisfaisant et séduisant.”

58 Ibid. His categorization is as follows. “1. Le Portrait (de professionnel ou d'amateur); 2. Le nu (atelier, plein air, ethnographie); 3. Le paysage (vues de villes, mer, montagne, campagne, exotisme); 4. La composition anecdotique (de la nature morte à l'instantané-souvenir); 5. Le reportage (l'événement historique—le fait divers—le théâtre—le mode, etc.); 6. Les documents scientifiques (photos aériennes, astronomique, microphotographiques, rayon X); Photos abstraites (surimpressions—photomontages négatifs—déformations— rayogrammes—photogrammes); 7. Divers—La publicité—La carte postale—Le livre illustré par la photo.”

59 Call for submission, Archives, Musée Des Arts Décoratifs. This largely overlaps with Chéronne’s proposal, with an addition of “reproduction of art works.”

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Except for the last category, these genres are all included in Chéronnet’s proposal in

Photographie 1933-34. The exhibition was thus an embodiment of his ideas. As Challine criticizes, this exhibition did not offer a history of the medium. However, following

Chéronnet’s plan, the show still retained an interest in and an awareness of the preservation of photographs as national heritage.

Considering this point, I add that the hanging pattern in the retrospective section according to the lenders’ names may also be interpreted as an international declaration of the ownership of these photographs by prominent Parisian collectors like Barthélémy, Sirot, and

Gilles. There were some significant losses of historical photographs—thus important cultural heritage of France—to the hands of foreigners in interwar France. The body of work by the pioneer of modern photography, Eugène Atget was one of the most serious cases.

Commenting on this exhibition, Guenne points out that the exhibition lacked Atget despite its ambition to create a comprehensive collection of photography.60 Atget had received almost unanimous exaltation by contemporary photographers and critics, both conservative and progressive, by this time. The discovery of this unnoticed Parisian photographer was first made by the American Man Ray in the early 1920s. Abbott, who was working as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray, played a crucial role in catapulting Atget to international fame. She met

Atget in 1926 and bought his prints and negatives upon his death the following year. She then returned to the United States in 1929, bringing his works back with her. Therefore, by the time Peignot conceived the 1936 exhibition, this precious cultural heritage, which proved the contribution of France to the development of modern photography, had left the French soil.61

60 Guenne, “La photographie vivante, Les Dix,” 37.

61 A year later, in 1937, this collection of Atget’s works was featured in Beaumont Newhall’s Photography 1839-1937 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibition included twenty-three works by the

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Other American interventions similarly removed French photographic heritage from its birthplace. The American photographer and publicist Thérèse Bonney acquired a collection of nineteenth-century photographs, especially French daguerreotypes, during her stay in

France in the 1920s. Likewise, the collection of Cromer, the most important private collection of photography in France, was obtained by Americans. Although the direction général des

Beaux-Arts, along with Peignot, made efforts to acquire this collection, it ultimately made its way to the Georges Eastman Estate in Rochester, New York, before the outbreak of World

War II. Given such cases, Frenchmen were pressured to protect historical prints and to open the collection to the public. The retrospective section of the 1936 exhibition represents this urge for the preservation of their cultural heritage.

Connection with Photography 1839-1937

Although it was largely defined by the French local conditions and contexts, the program of Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine to institutionalize photography is comparable to the canonical Photography 1839-1937 held at MoMA a year later. This epoch-making exhibition curated by Beaumont Newhall, then the librarian of the museum, was another attempt to legitimize photography as the museum piece by displaying original photographic prints. Covering various works from past to present and both artistic and scientific tendencies, this American exhibition aimed to provide a similar overview of photography as the Paris show. In fact, Newhall contacted Peignot while preparing for his project, and the French exhibition caused a direct influence on the MoMA show, as I will describe later in this section. The connection between the two events, however, highlights photographer and consolidated his reputation, while the French exhibition could not do so. Beaumont Newhall, Photography 1839-1937 (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1937), 107. Catalogue entry from 262 to 284.

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different fates of photography in each country. Following a series of exhibitions held in the late 1930s, MoMA established the department of photography, directed by Newhall, in 1940, and successfully integrated the medium into its exhibition programs and collection for the first time in the world. On the contrary, no specialized institution was established in France until the 1960s, while Peignot primarily withdrew from the promotion of photography after the

1936 exhibition. A careful analysis of the relationship between the two exhibitions clarifies the reasons behind these two contrasting developments and the ambivalence toward photography in interwar France.

Beaumont Newhall’s Visit to Paris

In early 1936, the director of MoMA, Alfred Barr Jr., entrusted Newhall with organizing a photography exhibition providing an overview of the medium’s entire history.62

Newhall began examining histories of photography that had recently been composed by

Europeans for this project. In his memoirs, he specifies that he relied mainly on the two- volume Geschichte der Photographie by Josef Maria Eder (1932) and Histoire de la découverte de la photographie (1925) by Potonniée (Edward Epstein translated this volume into English in 1936 as The History of the Discovery of Photography). These classic histories of photography, which traced the technological developments of the photographic medium, helped Newhall elaborate the strictly techno-centric historical narrative proposed in the 1937

62 Beaumont Newhall, “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian” in Perspective on Photography: Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 5. Newhall arrived the museum as its librarian in 1935, replacing Iris Barry, who then became the first curator of the museum’s new Film Department.

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show, as Allison Bertrand explains. 63 The books also contained a wealth of illustrations that enabled Newhall to determine the content of his project. In addition to these histories,

Newhall referred to La Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle: Essai de sociologie et d'esthétique by Gisèle Freund. Freund based this volume on her thesis submitted to the

Sorbonne in 1936. This paper was the first dissertation on photography in France that dealt not only with the medium’s mechanical evolution, but also with its influence and interaction with changes in society. Newhall recalls that this new study was of “great importance” for him in understanding “the social and aesthetic forces that shaped photography as a medium.”64

In addition to these three standard texts, which constitute essential scholarly references even today, Newhall named the catalogue of Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine as the fourth primary sourcebook in his memoirs. Newhall likely obtained this title directly from the exhibition’s organizers, either Metman or Peignot. On April 14, 1936,

Newhall sent a letter to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, asking for a copy of the show’s catalogue, as well as “all other pieces of documentation” regarding the event, and informed them he planned to hold a photography exhibition at MoMA the coming year.65 Newhall recalls that this publication helped him “greatly in putting together the exhibition and in writing the catalogue introduction.”66 However, this fact has not been much recognized because Newhall did not include this volume in the bibliography of his exhibition’s catalogue,

63 Allison Bertrand, “Beaumont Newhall’s ‘Photography 1839-1939’: Making History,” History of Photography 21 (No.2, Summer 1997): 137-146.

64 Newhall, “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian,” 5.

65 Letter from Beaumont Newhall to Louis Metman, April 14, 1936, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs D1- 210. He asked for the catalogue and “tout autre espèce de documentation que vous pouvez nous donner.”

66 Newhall, “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian,” 5.

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while the other three titles are listed as sources for the “Principles of Photography.”67 This omission certainly obscured the contribution of the 1936 Paris show to Newhall’s exhibition.

The catalogue was particularly useful for him in locating and identifying photography collections and collectors in France. Thanks to their loans, Newhall could organize the retrospective section of his exhibition, and Peignot made an irreplaceable contribution to this process. To prepare for the show, Newhall traveled to Europe between late 1936 and early

1937. His first destination was Paris, where he met Peignot immediately upon his arrival. The

Frenchman welcomed the American and assigned the chief editor of Arts et métiers graphiques, André Lejard, as his coordinator. In the exhibition catalogue, Newhall acknowledges that Arts et méiters graphiques and Lejard were supportive of his project and that he “could not have assembled such a fine exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art without their enthusiastic help.”68 During his stay in Paris, Peignot and Lejard helped Newhall meet with Parisian photographers and collectors connected to Peignot’s network—virtually everyone in Paris. In his letter to Barr from Paris, Newhall reported that “every morning I receive them in my hotel, and pick and choose” and that there was “a great amount of good work being done here.”69

Because the principal aim of MoMA’s project was to provide an “overview” of photography, Newhall’s attention was also drawn to historical photographs owned by Parisian collectors.70 Peignot and Lejard introduced Newhall to those who had loaned their holdings to

67 Newhall, Photography 1839-1937, 91.

68 Newhall, “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian,” 5.

69 Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Exhibition Records, 60.2.

70 Newhall, “The Challenge of Photography to This Art Historian,” 6.

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the 1936 Marsan show. The vast collections of these Frenchmen, especially that of

Barthélémy, Gilles, and Sirot, delighted Newhall. In another letter to Barr, he explained that he “had not supposed that there was such an incredible richness of old photographs in private collections—literally each of the men I have seen has thousands.”71 He excitedly reported on his discoveries in these Parisian collections:

I have daguerreotypes of 1839; an actual complete daguerreotypist’s outfit; Nadar portraits in his first manner, done on salted paper; the first photo-engraving, etched on the daguerreotype plate itself by Fizeau, 1841 (gift to the library); wonderful architectural photographs on paper negatives by Le Secq, with examples of the negatives; superb Paris views by Marville, 1850-55; a Brady daguerreotype; a sample- book of stereoscopic views, gorgeously presented on orange-yellow leaves; Fenton’s views of the Crimean war; the rare publication of Victor Hugo’s photographs; first snapshots, etc. The beauty and the strength of these early photos will surprise you as much as it does me.72

These Parisian findings reassured him that he would be able to mount a “marvelous historical section.”73 This successful hunt for both contemporary and historical photography in France even made him extend his stay in the country, which affected his original trip itinerary to other European countries.74

71 Letter from Newhall to Alfred Barr Jr., October 15, 1936, Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Exhibition Records, 60.2.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid. In Paris, he also studied, at the library of the SFP, their collection of not only photographs but also scholarly literatures and books. He also requested contributions to his exhibition, but the SFP rejected this request.

74 Ibid. He explains as follows: “But now that I see that I can make a splendid historical section in Paris, I have decided that it is better to cut short my English stay, for modern photography in England is a sad affair.”

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The Diminishing of France in the History of Photography

While the historical photographs gathered in Paris consisted the core content of the nineteenth-century display in the 1937 show at MoMA, works by contemporary Parisian photographers also constituted a considerable proportion of the exhibition. Positively evaluating them, Newhall took many of these prints for his own exhibition.75 This included not only such now-canonical photographers as Brassaï, Tabard, Henri, Kertész, Kollar, and

Man Ray, but also middle-of-the-road practitioners like Dumas, Parry, Duval, Rogi André, and Schall. The “Contemporary Photography” section of the exhibition displayed 272 photographs by seventy-seven photographers. Ninety works belonged to thirty-two photographers based in Paris or other French cities. This comprised the section’s second largest demographic group, next to that of the American photographers, which totaled 126 works by thirty contemporary practitioners. Therefore, Newhall’s Parisian encounter played no small role in determining the outcome of this exhibition.

However, despite their outstanding presence in the event, most of these Parisian photographers did not remain in the photography’s historical canon established by Newhall in his book, The History of Photography. Originally based on the show’s catalogue, this volume was revised by Newhall several times for the years to come and constituted the foundation for many of today’s accounts of the history of photography. It is necessary to consider what instigated this unfavorable consequence for these photographers, who typified and represented the mid-1930s French photographic scene. The critic Alain Fleig argues Newhall tried to confine the image of French photography to that of aestheticism and conservatism in order to

75 Beaumont Newhall, Focus: Memoirs of a Life in Photography (Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1993), 48.

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highlight the American advancement.76 However, as I have demonstrated, French photography was about aestheticism throughout the 1930s, thus Newhall’s exhibition was a faithful representation of the French photographic scene. Therefore, it is essential to consider what made the typical mid- to late 1930s French subjective and artistic photography unfit for the historical narrative proposed by Newhall.

I argue that the decline of these photographers in the United States, or in the formation of photography’s historical canon in MoMA under Newhall, occurred for two reasons. First, the techno-centric narrative proposed by Newhall did not allow for the French photographic tenets of this period. Photography in mid-1930s France was founded on the ambiguous concept of métier. As I have discussed, this idea incorporated any kind of photographic method and technique, ranging from modernist experimentation to the notorious Pictorialist flou, inasmuch as they represented the photographer’s skill and personality. This concept equalizes time and history and reduces the product to the expression of the photographer’s self. All photographic tendencies, past and present, could be employed without any serious consideration to their historical context. In this regard, métier is an ahistorical concept and at odds with Newhall’s linear and progressive historical narrative based on the technological development of the medium. Moreover, the definition of photography as témoignage, proposed by Waldemar George in 1930, emphasizes the role of the operator over the mechanism of the photographic apparatus. While Newhall’s history was firmly based in the mechanical progress of photography, this typical French vision was grounded in a humanitarian understanding of photographic creation, which was at odds with the techno- centric narrative.

76 Alain Fleig, Etant donné l’âge de la lumière II : Naissance de la photographie comme média (Lausanne: Ides et Calendes, 1997), 247.

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Secondly, Newhall’s understanding of contemporary photography was profoundly influenced by the European avant-gardes that the middle-of-the-road French photographic scene had repelled by the mid-1930s. As Bertrand demonstrates, Newhall’s stance was a result of his study of avant-garde film and photography at Harvard. Furthermore, MoMA advocated the advancement of European avant-garde art, as the canonical exhibition Cubism and Abstract art in 1936 represents.77 Julien Lévy, another main actor of the interwar

American photographic scene, also influenced Newhall. Both graduates of Harvard and known as so-called “Harvard modernists,” Lévy and Newhall knew each other well. Lévy made Photographie known in the United States, but he primarily focused on the introduction of avant-garde art and photography, especially Surrealism and the German New Vision by organizing a series of exhibitions at his Manhattan gallery throughout the 1930s.78 Contrary to this embrace of the avant-garde in the United States, French interwar photography strayed from its principle, as I have demonstrated throughout this dissertation. Although it is true

French photographers were well represented in the 1937 exhibition, this might be because

Newhall could not contact the former avant-gardes, especially those associated with the

Russian Constructivism and the German New Vision due to the political situation in these two countries. Indeed, in the post-war reedit of The History of Photography, French conservative photographers were gradually replaced by the now-canonical avant-garde figures.

MoMA’s championship of the avant-garde was also affected by demographic changes during and after World War II. Former avant-gardes in Germany, such as Moholy-Nagy and other exiled former Bauhäusler, played an important role in the United States. These artists

77 Bertrand, “Beaumont Newhall’s ‘Photography 1839-1939’.”

78 Ingrid Shaffner and Lisa Jacobs, ed. Julien Lévy : Portrait of an Art Gallery (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1998).

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contributed to establishing the post-war American photographic and graphic art scenes, with their active teaching and publishing at the New Bauhaus in Chicago. Moholy was also one of the honorary advisors for the 1937 exhibition and exerted great influence on Newhall’s attitude toward European photography. In contrast, most of the photographers of métier in

1930s France (mostly French nationals and politically conservative, often on the Right) remained in the country during and after the war. Some, including Peignot, participated in the cultural programs of the Vichy government, which certainly undermined their international influence.

Photography in Service of Publishing

While French métier photographers declined, the photography promoters in interwar

France, represented by Peignot, almost ceased to deal with photography in the post-war period.

Indeed, the 1936 exhibition marked Peignot’s last serious and important engagement with the promotion of photography and his final commitment to the historical development of the medium. Peignot continued publishing Photographie and photo albums after 1936, including

Paris de Jour by Schall (1937) (fig. 3-24), Londres de nuit (1938) by Bill Brandt (fig. 4-17), and Petits et grands au royaume des bêtes by Ylla (1938) (fig. 4-18). However, these volumes did not exert as significant an influence as the company’s earlier publications. The first two volumes aimed to repeat the success of Brassaï’s Paris de nuit. Schall’s volume offers a counterpoint to Brassaï’s by collecting photographs of daytime Paris, while Brandt’s album repeats the night walks of Brassaï in another major European city. Ylla was one of the stars of

Photographie in its final years with her signature animal portraits. Her book targeted children and parents by reproducing photographs of animal families. Compared to the modernist and

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innovative quality of the company’s publications in the early 1930s, these volumes were lackluster continuations of its operation. Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques and the magazine soon ceased with the mobilization of Paris in 1939. In the post-war years, except for a few attempts, Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques and Peignot almost withdrew from dealing with photography as an independent subject. It is essential to consider what made

Peignot move away from photography, despite his active engagement in its promotion in the interwar period.

These situations should be understood in relation to the professions of photography’s supporters in interwar France. As Françoise Denoyelle suggests, the development and promotion of photography were undertaken by those in graphic, printing, and publishing professions in France, such as Peignot, Lucien Vogel, Florence Fels, Carlo Rim, Georges

Cherensol, and Christian Zervos.79 This sharply contrasts with the situation in Germany and the United States, where the advancement of the medium was supported not only by publishers and graphic artists, such as Stefan Lorant and Tschichold, but also, and primarily, by those who were directly involved in art and its institution, including art historians, artists, photographers, curators, and gallerists.

This difference was already apparent with Film und Foto in 1929. While the national exhibits of each country were directed by renowned artists and photographers, including

Moholy-Nagy, Edward Weston, Steichen, and Lissitzky, the French section was organized by the publisher Zervos. Whereas German art historians, such as Franz Roh and Siegfried

Kracauer, wrote fairly extensively on photography, French art historians, like Henri Focillon and Elie Faure, did not provide any significant comments on the medium. In addition,

79 Françoise Denoyelle, La Lumière de Paris: Les usages de la photographie, 1919-1939 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997), 312.

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American gallerists and curators, like Lévy and Newhall, established institutional frameworks for incorporating photography into the context of art. By contrast, France could not create a museum or a specialized gallery for photography, with the exception of François Tuefferd’s

Le Chasseur d’images, inaugurated in June 1937.80 Tuefferd was also a photographer and his works were exhibited in the Marsan exhibition in 1936. He was close to Peignot’s circle, as well as Le Rectangle. The gallery’s inaugurating exhibition was a solo show by Emmanuel

Sougez, followed by that of Photographie 1938 and the first salon of Le Rectangle. However, this was an isolated attempt in the country.

Reflecting the initiatives of publishers, venues for the exhibition of photography were mostly gallery spaces associated with or administrated by publishers and bookstores, or as part of larger graphic art exhibitions. Rim added a section on photography to the graphic art exhibition Salon de l’Araignée in 1930, while the U.A.M. invited Krull and Man Ray to their first salon in the same year. The bookstore-gallery La Plume d'or, run by Marcelle Schmitt, held several photography exhibitions. Of particular importance, the gallery of Pleïade was an irreplaceable venue for displaying photographs where the New Vision was disseminated and propagated.81 The gallery also organized shows on the various applications of the medium, including la Publicité par la photographie (1935) and Documents de la vie sociale (1935).

However actively and enthusiastically these galleries promoted photography, it was not their primary trade. When modern photography entered France in the mid-1920s in the

80 The gallery was located on 46 rue de Bac, near the office of Arts et métiers graphiques. Laure Trassard, “Les Chasseur d'images” in Le Cirque de François Tuefferd: Photographie de 1933 à 1954 (Paris: Musée Nationale des arts et traditions populaire, 1998), 27.

81 Quentin Bajac, “Les Mirroirs réformants” in Praha, Paris, Barcelona: Modernidad Fotografica de 1918 a 1948 (Madrid: La Fabrica Editorial, 2010), 70. This gallery was first located on the Boulevard Raspail, then moved to the Boulevard de Saint-Michel in 1930.

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form of advertisements, illustrated magazines, and portfolios of individual photographers, it was inseparable from print and graphic media. As a result, those in the publishing industry first recognized and benefited from the novelty of the medium’s contemporary innovations.

However, once its context changed in the mid-1930s and was redefined as an autonomous artistic practice independent of other fields of graphic art, as embodied by the 1936 exhibition, the former promoters, including Peignot, lost their cause, even though it was Peignot who led the aestheticization and institutionalization of the medium.

Furthermore, although Peignot’s circle and the SFP members aspired to define photography as an autonomous form of art equal to painting, painters in this period did not agree. Amédée Ozenfant, for instance, described in 1937 that “one should remember that photography is but a plastic medium among others, just like clay and color, in the service of the artist’s creative imagination.”82 Here, Ozenfant’s attitude toward photography remains conventional, positing the medium as a “humble servant” of art. This hierarchical view was also seen in more politically engaged expressions. As realism in art became an increasingly pressing issue in the mid-1930s because of the political turmoil in this period, photography’s importance as a documentary medium grew. However, painting usually took on the truly political and ideological role of presenting reality in France, and photography never achieved an equivalent status. In the famous debate over the querelle du réalisme held at the Maison de la culture by the initiative of the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists (AEAR),

Louis Aragon asserted that photography’s future should belong to photographers engaged in

82 Amédée Ozenfant, “Notes d'un touriste à l'exposition,” Cahiers d'art 8-10 (1937): 241-7. English translation from, Golan, Muralnomad, 124.

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social and political struggles.83 However, he confined photography’s role to an aid for the new realism in painting, without promoting the use of the medium itself for the same purpose.

Painting was the French medium of art, and thus was entitled to be a truly political and ideological means to engage in reality. Photography, despite its French origin and identity, always remained in an ambiguous position vis-à-vis painting.

Affaire Montel in 1936

An incident that occurred during the 1936 exhibition represents French photography’s dependence on the publishing and graphic contexts. Although this show proposed the independence of the photographic exhibition from printed matters in the hanging and treatment of displayed prints, this was not true of its organization and motive. Peignot actually conceived the exhibition for the benefit of Photographie’s sales. In correspondences with

Metman for the preparation of the exhibition, he repeatedly insisted on the simultaneous appearance of the album with the exhibition. He evidently intended to maximize commercial interest and social recognition by the concurrent promotion of the two events. In confirmation of this point, Peignot persuaded Metman to inaugurate the show at some point between

October and December 1935, ideally in November. Considering that Photographie 1936 was expected to be released in September 1935, he likely intended the show to be a sequel to the publication. Thus, for Peignot, the timing of the exhibition was sensitive to assure the reciprocity of the two projects. The title page of Photographie 1936 bears the following passage: “This album presents a number of photographs that will be present at the Exposition

83 Louis Aragon, untitled essay in La Querelle du réalisme (Paris: Collection Commune, Editions Sociales Internaitonales, 1936), 55-68. English translation in Christopher Phillips, Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940 (New York: Aperture), 68-77.

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internationale de la photographie contemporaine organized by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Pavillon de Marsan—Musée du Louvre Paris, December 1935-January 1936.”84 When this volume was released in September, the date of the exhibition was not yet fixed. Peignot was so anxious to realize his initial plan that he publicized the show with its tentative schedule.

Despite his aspirations, the show’s opening was deferred to January 1936 as the selection process took much longer than initially expected. Metman reportedly commented that there were more than three thousand works sent from over twenty countries in Europe,

America, and Asia. Jurors had to limit their selection to the size of the venue, eliminating approximately two thousand works.85 Thus, opening in the fall of 1935 was impossible. In other words, Peignot’s extensive international network and Photographie’s reputation ironically produced an unfavorable outcome for his commercial expectation.

Peignot’s ambition to promote the show in tandem with his publications was noticed by another influential publisher of photography, Paul Montel, who harshly criticized Peignot and Arts et métiers graphiques. Montel was the director of Editions Paul Montel, which published La Revue française de la photographie et cinématographie and Le Photographe, among others, and officially relayed foreign photo albums, like Das deutsche Lichtbild. As

Peignot described, he was “almost like an official personage” who also worked as the director

84 Photographie 1936 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1935), 1. “Cet album présente de nombreuses photographies figurant à l'exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine organisée par le Musée des Arts Décoratifs au Pavillon de Marsan—Musée du Louvre Paris Décembre 1935-Janvier 1936.”

85 Metman repeats this point in letters to those who sent their works and jurors. For instance, the American photographer Margaret Burke-White sent her works after the deadline of submission. Metman replied her with a letter of rejection explaining there were too many submissions and jurors did not have room for adding new works. Letter from Metman to Margaret Burke-White, n.d., Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-210.

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of the Ecole technique de photographie et cinématographie, the first and only state-sponsored photography school, opened in 1923.86

Montel severely attacked the exhibition soon after its opening in the Pavillon de

Marsan in January 1936. In the company’s La Revue française de la photographie et cinématographie (issue 387, February 1936), Montel disparaged the event’s content and its intent. He denounced the exhibition for being a commercial conspiracy by its organizers in favor of a “particular publisher,” evidently Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques. After acknowledging the importance of the show as the first museum exhibition of photography at the beginning of his article, Montel complains that the exhibit lacked press photography, which he insisted was the most significant impetus for the medium’s contemporary development. Indeed, the show was weak in this aspect because of its inclination toward aesthetic pictures, reflecting the editorial stance of Arts et métiers graphiques and

Photographie.87 In this respect, Montel’s claim was legitimate and based on a sober observation of the show’s content.

However, when he begins to explain the reasons for this indifference, his voice suddenly turns reproachful and emotional:

We had first believed that this indifference vis-à-vis press photography was involuntary, but we think we discovered the explanation for it during the visit that our informational role required us to make: the Administration wanted to reserve its favor for a particular publisher, one of our colleagues, and give him the possibility, thanks to this event, to sell his publications, which were the only ones for sale in the Salon. And the catalogue, which we were never requested to advertise, has the following phrase in large letters, which proves that this was not about artistic propaganda but only about

86 Letter from Peignot to Metman, February 3, 1936, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs. “[I]l est un peu un personnage officiel, en ce sense qu'il est directeur de la seule école de photographie subventionnée par l'Etat.”

87 Photographie featured press photography after this year. “Documents: Rhythmes et images” in Photographie 1939 (Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1938), 91-102.

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business: “Do not leave without buying ‘X’ Magazine dedicated to this exhibition,” but we were never informed of anything at all regarding this.88

Here, Montel’s attack is aimed toward the following advertisements of AMG publications printed on the first pages of the exhibition catalogue (fig. 4-19): “PHOTOGRAPHIE 36 is the reflection of the works that you have just admired. Claim this magnificent album of Editions

Arts et Métiers Graphiques for 75 francs.” Also, on its verso appears (fig. 4-20) the following:

“Do not leave without purchasing LA REVUE DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE, whose issue 34 is entirely dedicated to this Exhibition.”89 Montel’s “X” magazine, or La Revue de la

Photographie, was formerly Photo-ciné-graphie, AMG’s amateur photography magazine.

This publication changed its title to La Revue de la photographie in December 1935, and the first issue under this new title (issue 34) was dedicated to the show in the Pavillon de Marsan.

This issue contained a number of reproductions of exhibited works along with favorable articles by Vétheuil, Sougez, and Chéronnet—all allies of Peignot—of the show.

Editions Paul Montel and Arts et Métiers Graphiques had been competing in the field of photography publishing via amateur photography magazines (La Revue française de la photographie et cinématographie by Montel and Photo-ciné-graphie, or La Revue de la

88 Paul Montel, “Exposition Internationale de la Photographie Contemporaine,” La Revue française de la photographie et de cinématographie 387 (February, 1936): 48. “L'explication de cette indifférence vis-à-vis de la Presse photographique, que nous avions crue involontaire, nous pensons l'avoir découverte au cours de la visite que notre rôle d'informateurs nous faisait un devoir de rendre: c'est que l'Administration voulait réserver ses faveurs à un unique éditeur, un confrère, et lui donner la possibilité, grâce à cette manifestation, d'écouler ses ouvrages qui, seuls, sont en vente au Salon. Et le catalogue, pour lequel nous n'avions jamais été sollicités de faire de la publicité, porte en gros caractères cette phrase qui prouve qu'il ne s'agit pas de propagande artistique, mais seulement de commerce: “Ne partez pas sans acheter la Revue 'X' consacrée à cette exposition”, alors que nous, nous n'avons jamais été informés de quoi que ce soit à son sujet.”

89 Advertisement in the catalogue of 1936 exhibition, Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, n.p. “PHOTOGRAPHIE 36 est le reflet des œuvres que vous venez d'admirer/ PROCUREZ- VOUS ce magnifique album 75 francs” and “Ne partez pas sans acheter LA REVUE DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE dont le n°34 est entièrement consacré à cette Exposition.”

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photographie, by AMG) and albums (Das deutsche Lichtbild, Photograms of the Year, Luci ed Ombre from Montel and Photographie from AMG). The two certainly had hostile feelings toward each other. In a letter to Metman after this incident, Peignot did not hide his antipathy for Montel, blatantly describing him as an arrogant man without allies in the contemporary photographic scene.90

Montel’s criticism of the 1936 exhibition stemmed from this rivalry and was also sparked by a miscommunication between Montel and the exhibition’s organizers. When

Peignot and Metman sent letters asking for support and cooperation to Parisian publishers, photo agencies, unions, and printers, their communication somehow did not reach Montel.

This oversight evoked Montel’s resentment. In his letter to the museum on August 30, 1935,

Montel angrily asked why he had not been informed of the show. The museum’s assistant curator, Jacques Guérin, answered on behalf of Metman, who was then away from Paris.

Guérin said they were “strongly surprised” as they had “certainly sent the reminder-invitation” to him.91 The truth of this incident is not evident. The matter might be miscommunication or, given the rivalry between Peignot and Montel, either of them (or both) may have lied about sending/receiving the invitation and performed in their own interest.

Montel and Peignot have been regarded as the representatives of the old and new generations of photography’s supporters in interwar France. This incident has thus been considered an embodiment of the conflict of generations.92 However, this simple dichotomy

90 Letter from Peignot to Metman, February 3, 1936, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

91 Letter from Jecques Guérin to Paul Montel. September 9, 1935, Archives, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, D1-210. Given this situation, Peignot asked Metman to reply to Montel, in giving him a manuscript that politely but solidly rejected the accusation by reminding him that they had contacted Montel in the summer. Those who were rejected from the show also uttered similar accusations that the show was a conspiracy in favor of AMG.

92 Challine, Une Histoire contrariée, 253-7.

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of old and new, or conservative and modern, does not work in the mid-1930s photographic scene in France in which most actors were eclectic. Here, more important fact is that the show fell victim to the conflict between these two leading publishers. This point highlights that both

Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques and Editions Paul Montel regarded the exhibition as a means to benefit their publications. While Peignot, from the outset, aimed to increase the sales of Photographie, Montel denounced the event primarily because he was not given a place to publicize his magazine and albums in the catalogue and criticized his rival’s privatization and monopolization of the exhibition. Thus, for these publishers—and promoters of photography in interwar France, by implication—photography remained a means rather than an end.

Therefore, the idea of photography as art, or as an art object, did not find supporters and mediators who could appropriately place it in the context of fine art.

Another Exposition Internationale in 1937: Peignot’s Synthesis of Graphisme

Peignot’s prioritization of graphic, publishing, and printing contexts over photographic is symbolically represented by his engagement in the Paris World’s Fair of 1937. A month after the MoMA exhibition closed in April 1937, Paris hosted the Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne. This World’s Fair, held under the Popular

Front government led by Léon Blum, is best known for its extensive use of political photomurals in each participating nation’s pavilion. Murals executed by the Spanish poster designer Josep Renau for the Spanish pavilion provide the most outstanding example of the profusion of photography at the Fair. In fully utilizing the communicative and pedagogic capacities of enlarged photographs and photomontages, Renau’s photographic panels (fig. 4-

21), installed both inside and outside the pavilion, visualized a farewell to the country’s

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ignorant past and hope for an enlightened future under the Popular Front government.93 For the French pavilions, Fernand Léger and Charlotte Perriand undertook mural displays in favor of the current government and its policies as embodied by the panels for the Agriculture pavilion (fig. 4-8).94 Not limited to these anti-fascist camps, totalitarian regimes—namely

Nazi Germany, the Stalinist Soviet Union, and Fascist Italy—also exploited photomurals to internationally propagate the greatness of their dictators and the doctrine of their nations.

In addition to these political photomurals, enlarged and montaged photography were omnipresent in the Fair’s grounds as both subject and means of display. For the first time in the history of the World’s Fair, the 1937 Paris exposition dedicated a pavilion entirely to modern reproducible media. The Photo-Ciné-Photo pavilion (fig. 4-22), located under the

Eiffel Tower, represented three major categories of modern graphisme: photographie, cinématographie, and phonographie. The pavilion, designed by Saint-Maurice and Lemaire, was shaped like a large camera and adorned with enlarged photographs provided by Agence

Chevojon (specialist of industrial photographs) and photomontages by François Kollar.95 the

Fair also had several exhibits commemorating the evolution of modern mass media, including the pavilions of Presse, Radio, and Publicité, which obligatorily contained pedagogic photographic displays.

As one of the giants of the French graphic and publishing industries, Peignot participated in the Fair as an exhibitor. Despite his serious engagement in photography in

93 For details of the photomurals in the Spanish pavilion, see Jordana Mendelson, “Josep Renau and the 1937 Spanish Pavilion in Paris” in Documenting Spain (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2005), 125- 183.

94 For more detailed discussion of their photomurals, see Golan, Muralnomad, 140-162.

95 The ground floor of the pavilion reportedly exhibited a large number of “artistic photography.” Shanny Peer, “Photo-Ciné-Phono,” in Cinquintenaire de l'Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne, ed. Bertrand Lemoine (Paris: Institut Française d'Architecture, 1987), 234-237.

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1936 in the Pavillon de Marsan, Peignot’s participation in the Fair concentrated on his primary business of typography and printing. His contribution was threefold. First, he provided Peignot, a new typeface designed by A. M. Cassandre, as the Fair’s semi-official graphic identity.96 Second, he took charge of one of the Fair’s official exhibits in the

Imprimerie section, installed in the newly constructed Palais de Chaillot. Finally, he supplied letter props for the Fair’s other sections and exhibitors. The World’s Fair was an opportunity to internationally solidify his accomplishments. The fact that photography was not among his contributions to the event indicates his ambivalence toward the medium in his career.

Peignot: A Self-Reflective Typeface

The typeface Peignot (fig. 4-23), released in 1937 as the Fair’s quasi-official letter design, was Peignot’s last collaborative project with Cassandre in the interwar period. A number of the Fair’s official publications, including programs, posters, and even the menus for its related banquets and galas, were printed in this sophisticated alphabet that combines both upper and lower case letters. The typeface was also used in three publications by

Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques that were directly connected to the World’s Fair. The first was L'Homme l'éléctricité, la vie, an official booklet for the Electricity and Light pavilion (fig.

4-24). This pavilion was one of the fair’s principal attractions and celebrated the role of technology in modern life, along with the Palais de la Découverte (science pavilion in the

Grand Palais), Railway, and Aeronautic pavilions. Robert Mallet-Stevens designed its modernist architecture with a smoothly curved façade. This pavilion contained a monumental mural painting by Raoul Dufy entitled the Fairy of Electricity, a large group portrait of

96 I will italicize the Peignot typeface to avioid confusion with the family name Peignot.

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historical scientists and engineers, as well as a gigantic insulator installed in front of it. The

AMG volume produced for the pavilion included numerous photographic illustrations of these exhibits with the captions and headlines composed with Peignot. The second publication using Peignot was the catalogue of an art exhibition, “Les Maîtres de l'art indépendant, 1895-

1937” (fig. 4-25), which I mentioned in chapter 3. Held on the initiative of the curator

Raymond Escholier at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la ville de Paris in Petit Palais, this exhibition was the first occasion on which a French public art museum hung works by Cubists and foreign artists of the Ecole de Paris.97 Finally, a photo album with sixty photographs by

Pierre Verger capturing each pavilion applied Peignot on its cover (fig. 4-26). Like Maurice

Cloche’s 60 aspects de l’Exposition coloniale (1931), this album featured photographs of the

Fair’s pavilions.

Not limited to these printed materials, Peignot was also ubiquitous in the Fair’s grounds as it was used for signs, panels, and exhibits in many pavilions. The typeface was displayed in the U.A.M. pavilion (fig. 4-27), in which Peignot was one of the exhibitors; the stand of a deluxe book publisher Editions Charles Moreau in the Publicité Pavilion (fig. 4-28); and the exhibit of the “Literature” section inside the Palais de Chaillot (fig. 4-29). The quotations from Valéry carved on the façade of the Palais were also composed in Peignot and are still visible on the site today (fig. 4-30). Considering that Valéry provided the first article for Arts et métiers graphiques, “Les Deux vertus d'un livre,” this combination of his words and the Peignot typeface symbolically represents their long-lasting collaboration since the mid-1920s and implies that they were leading protagonists of the interwar French cultural milieu. With this extensive use, Peignot became a metonymic representation of the 1937 Fair

97 For the historical importance of this exhibition, see Bernadette Contensou ed., Paris 1937: L'Art indépendant (Paris: Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1987).

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along with the profusion of photomurals, the confrontation between the German and Soviet pavilions, the neoclassical architecture of the Palais de Chaillot, and Picasso’s Guernica in the

Spanish pavilion.98

The design principle of Peignot is the combination of upper and lower cases. To be more precise, the typeface employs majuscules in the place of minuscule letters with a slight modification of their form (fig. 4-23). This design resulted from an exploration of the essence of the Latin alphabet and the pursuit of a self-reflexive form of typography. Inspired by the

“semi-oncial” (today’s lower case letters) letter design of the Middle Ages, Peignot and

Cassandre started working on Peignot in 1930. They established its basic design principle in

1932 and fine-tuned it for its final release at the World’s Fair.99 A promotional booklet for

Peignot published upon its launch describes the typeface’s essence in detail. Unlike Bifur,

Acier, or Film, the best and creative new designs of Deberny et Peignot typefoundry of the

1930s, Peignot was not a “creation” or “brand-new” alphabet. Instead, the typeface was the materialization of essential aspects of each letter form and a reflection on the history of writing and printing:

In a detailed study on the evolution of letterforms through the centuries we first became certain that the principle of this evolution itself can be logically traced. The same concern for simplification, purification, and logic that stimulates research in all fields of contemporary art made us recognize that the sound of A can be conceived only in two manners: either in the epigraphic form A or its cursive form, which each correspond to a fundamentally different technique of writing. And, evidently, the

98 Peignot was also used for the title logo of Julien Lévy’s memoir. Julien Lévy, Memoir of an Art Gallery (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977).

99 The Bibliothèque nationale de France preserves a number of small cardboard pieces with preparatory designs for Peignot. Based on the collection, it is safe to say that Peignot’s basic design feature, the combination of upper and lower cases, was established as early as 1932. Fonds Jérôme Peignot, “V. Divers,” Cote 150705, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.

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epigraphic design was much more logically adapted to the technique of printing than the cursive.100

Epigraphic forms of letter are solid, rectilinear, and standardized, which made them ideal for printing. By contrast, cursives were initially invented to facilitate and accelerate writing by scribes. Lower cases in printing were born as a result of the efforts made by early printers to adapt cursives to the process of printing. Consequently, when Peignot and

Cassandre reflected on the essence of letter design and its relation to printing, they reached the idea of omitting the lower case, which essentially belongs to the realm of handwriting rather than machine-reliant printing. They decided to replace it with the upper case, which was believed to be closer to the origin and principle of printing.

However, a text composed solely of majuscules introduces the problem of legibility.

Peignot says that a “text in the capital is less legible than that in the lower case” for the following reason:101

Words take a monotonous rectangular form that does not offer the eye any point of reference. The eye seizes the silhouette of a word, or of a group of words; it does not spell out each letter, it does not break down the word into letters. That is the work of proofreaders. This long-established tendency for the eye to recognize the silhouette of letters by their tops and bases is one that should be respected. And this explains why, in PEIGNOT, we have preserved these assistants that are essential for easy reading.102

100 Charles Peignot, “Peignot” (promotional leaflet of Peignot), Dossier 2, Box X: La typographie, Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris. “C'est dans une étude approfondie de l'évolution des formes des lettres à travers les siècles que nous avons d'abord acquis la certitude que le principe de cette évolution même se pouvait poursuivre logiquement. Ce même souci de simplification, de purification et de logique qui anime les recherches dans tous les domaines de l'art contemporain nous fit constater que le son A ne se pouvait concevoir que de deux manières: soit sous sa forme épigraphique A, soit sous sa forme cursive , qui correspondent, l'une et l'autre, à une technique d'écriture essentiellement différente et que, de toute évidence, la conception épigraphique était beaucoup plus logiquement adaptée aux techniques de l'imprimerie que la cursive.”

101 Peignot, Peignot, n.p. “Un texte en capitales est moins lisible qu'un texte en bas de case.”

102 Ibid. “Le mot prend une forme rectangulaire monotone qui n'offre à l'œil aucun point de repère. Or, l'œil saisit la silhouette d'un mot, voire d'un groupe de mots; il n'épelle pas chaque lettre, il ne décompose pas le mot en lettres, ce qui, au contraire, est le fait du correcteur. Cette habitude que l'œil a prise des longues du haut et du bas est de celles qui doivent être respectées, ce qui explique que, dans le PEIGNOT, nous ayons conservé ces auxiliaires indispensables à une lecture facile.”

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Based on this principle, the minuscule in Peignot combined the variation of height in the lower case with the form of upper case letters. In the place of the minuscule, Peignot and

Cassandre used capitals of a diminished size and added an ascender or descender, if necessary, as seen in such letters as “h” or “p.”

When he described the principle behind this typeface, Peignot referred to the contemporary development of art toward “simplification, purification, and logic.” This attitude is emblematic of the self-reflective modernist position, based on the exploration of each genre’s and medium’s specific nature. By adopting the same principle for typography,

Peignot and Cassandre emblematized the essence of letters, writings, and printing in Peignot.

In other words, the typeface was a medium-specific form of typography and, in this sense, different from other interwar typefaces promoted by Deberny et Peignot. For example, Futura was intended for modernization and represented machine aesthetics and avant-gardism in typography through its streamlined and industrialized aesthetics. Bifur (fig. 1-18), Acier (fig.

1-21), and Film (fig. 1-22) were all designed for the specific demands of publicity works and concentrated on emphasizing visuality. While these letters fit specific purposes and content,

Peignot concerned the letter itself more than its use or destination. This typeface thus should be considered a conclusion to Peignot’s efforts in the interwar period to modernize French typography and to raise it to the rank of art, equal to other creative fields in intellectual and cultural activity.

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Exhibiting the Art of Printing

Peignot’s engagement with graphics and printing in the 1937 World’s Fair was realized in another synthesizing project when Georges Huisman, the directeur des Beaux-Arts, officially put Peignot in charge of the Fair’s Imprimerie section (fig. 4-31). This section belonged to the official program of the Fair, Classe 51ter, Groupe X.103 Groupe X aimed to assemble “all the literary, artistic, and technical practices concerning the book and printing, activities that can be reunited under the following titles: thoughts, books, graphic arts and crafts, prints.”104 The exhibit occupied the first floor of the left wing of the Palais de Chaillot, next to the Litérature section. The official main entrance, porte d’honneur, of the Fair was located at the Place du Trocadéro, in front of the Palais de Chaillot. Thus, this Imprimerie section was one of the first programs that the Fair’s international visitors could enjoy. Peignot fostered a connection with Huisman, an influential figure in French cultural politics, throughout the 1930s, and the 1936 exhibition had strengthened their relationship. Beyond this personal connection, Huisman’s appointed Peignot because he was the leading figure in

French printing and bookmaking, worthy of representing the Fair’s program aimed at displaying the national achievements in these fields.

If Peignot was the conclusion of Peignot’s exploration of typography, this exhibition was a synthesis of his printing activities during the interwar period. He realized his plan for the graphic art exhibition that he had initially proposed to Metman in 1933 to fully integrate

103 This group was presided by Julien Cain, the General Administrator of the Bibliothèque nationale. The other classes of the group included Classe 51, Livres et Revue (Littérature, Science, Droit, Beaux-Arts, Editions Musicales); 51 bis, Papier; 52, Illustration et Livre d'art; 53, Reliure; and 54, Gravure, Estampe. “Avertissement,” Arts et métiers graphiques 59, special issue on Les Arts et les techniques graphiques (Semptember 1937): 4.

104 Ibid. “[T]outes les activités littéraires, artistiques et techniques, concernant le livre et l’imprimerie, activités qui peuvent être réunies sous le titre: la pensée, le livre, les arts et métiers graphiques, l'estampe.”

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all the processes, machines, and products of printing and bookmaking. The section included a number of pedagogic panels with photographic illustrations that explained the fabrication of various base materials in the art of printing, including ink, paper, and letter blocks (fig. 4-

32).105 These panels were accompanied by a display of machines for typesetting and printing

(fig. 4-33). Peignot specially installed a printing shop in a large room of the Palais du Chaillot to demonstrate the three basic processes of printing: typographic, offset, and heliogravure (fig.

4-34). In addition to these exhibits, Peignot also showcased panels illustrating the evolution of the alphabet (fig. 4-35), maquettes for publicity work, and various formats and products of modern printing (fig. 4-36). The exhibit’s wall texts declared (fig. 4-37), “The Graphic Art:

What is printed necessitates the collaboration of art and technology.” In repeating the title of this World’s Fair, Les arts et techniques dans la vie moderne, this Imprimerie section demonstrated that printing was the foundation for modern media’s success.

In addition to these two major contributions, Peignot also supplied physical letter props to several sections of the Fair. For instance, the photographer André Vigneau and the painter Jean Lurçat ordered Deberny et Peignot “letters of cut-out cardboard for typographic murals” for their exhibit in the Cooperation Intellectuelle section.106 Such alphabet blocks were also employed in numerous sections of the Fair in combination with photographs (fig. 4-

29). Photomurals have often been examined solely for their photographic components.

105 “Deberny et Peignot: La belle époque de la typographie.” Caractère 12 (December 1975): 47. “J'y installai une imprimerie, synthèse des trois procédés, et y présentai des panneaux expliquant l'évolution des formes de l'alphabet.”

106 Correspondence between Deberny Peignot and Vigneau, April 30, 1937, Fonds Vigneau, MS2969, 422 fl, 228, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris. The order for “lettres en carton découpé pour typographie murale.” They ordered 509 capital letter props of 4 by 6 centimeters for their exhibit held on the top floor of the newly constructed Musée d'Art moderne on the Quai de Tokyo. Vigneau made a similar order to Deberny et Peignot in 1939 for his exhibition for the Caisse d'Allocation Familiales de Lille, “L'Exposition du Progrès Social” at the Pavillon de la Prévoyance sociale.

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However, as photomurals developed from publicity, and thus from the principle of

“typophoto,” textual elements had equal importance, especially in facilitating and directing the viewer’s interpretation of the contained images. Peignot’s letter props accompanying photomural displays symbolically represent his profession, which testifies to the graphic basis for the development of French photography in the interwar period.

Graphic and Photographic: Two Attitudes on Photomurals in Arts et métiers graphiques

The complex relationship between photography and graphic art in display should include an examination of the two attitudes toward the Fair’s photomurals expressed in Arts et métiers graphiques. The magazine published two essays on this topic: André Lejard’s “A

Propos d'une conception nouvelle de la publicité murale: Lucien Mazenod” (On a new concept of mural publicity: Lucine Mazenod) in issue 61 (January 1938) and Gisèle Freund’s

“La Photograhie à l'Exposition,” which appeared two months later in issue 62 (March 1938).

These two articles exemplify two diverging attitudes toward photomurals on the part of the publisher/graphic professional (Lejard) and of the photographer (Freund). Photomural is emblematic of photography’s application in the interwar period, as it embodies its integration into the graphic art context. Analyzing positions toward this form will thus clarify photography’s status, identity, and connection to graphic art.

The chief editor of Arts et métiers graphiques, Lejard, examined mural displays by the designer Lucien Mazenod (fig. 4-38). Lejard appreciated Mazenod’s works for its simplicity and capacity to straightforwardly convey a message without any misunderstanding.

Mazenod’s works in the Education pavilion, for instance, are plain photomontages that combine a few pieces of enlarged photographs and a short sentence against a background of

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abstract patterns. One of his murals presents a child gently holding a tulip. With the accompanying caption “Children are sensitive,” this panel represents the awakening of children’s sensitivity to natural life. Advocating for the clarity and immediacy of Mazenod’s photomurals, Lejard compares them to recent poster designs that he criticizes as “rebuses” after “fotomontage” had become popular. Lejard not only argues that posters became increasingly pedantic and complicated in their arrangement of image and text, but also disparages their private consumption based on contemplation. Lejard’s arguments appear

Leftist and nationalist, at the same time, because of his use of the word “fotomontage” with an

“f”, which implies the German origin of the technique.

Apart from this ideological inclination, his rejection of contemplation and the private consumption of these mural images indicates that Lejard’s understanding of photomurals is based on an attitude to look at a “publicity” work, as the title of his essay suggests. When he describes Mazenod’s photomurals as “mural publicity” belonging to the “art of poster- making,” he treats the photomural as a piece of graphic art and appears indifferent to photography itself, seeing it merely as the poster’s graphic element. Indeed, the posters he discusses were based both on photographic images and drawings, and Lejard did not make any distinction between the two, grouping them under a single category of “poster.” This represents a typical attitude of those engaged in graphic art and printing, who did not care about photography itself, only for its function as a graphic component.

By contrast, Freund’s essay embraces the photographer’s stance on the medium. She examines photomurals of national pavilions from a more specifically photographic point of view. Her article provides a precise account of the ontology of photographs in photomurals,

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especially photography’s truthfulness.107 Examining the political and propagandistic uses of photomurals, she points out the danger of photomontages. She warns that the technique has a capacity for mind control because the truthfulness of photographic images may convey an incorrect message that engenders what she calls “directed reflection.” Here, Freund, arguably one of the most scholarly-minded photographers of this period, reflects precisely based on the medium’s nature. Her article concludes with the following passage:

It is probable that, for the coming time, monumental photography will cease to please us. In fact, the photo that the camera produces, and that our eye desires, is a relatively small image, which should remain as manageable and classifiable, if not more, than a book or a record. This also best serves the ideas and sentiments that created photography and that it can create in return.108

This prediction is certainly based on her fear of the enlarged photograph’s dangerous potential to twist people’s way of thinking. However, this idea of “small” photographs being

“manageable and classifiable,” similar to books and music discs, reflects the growing desire for owning, appreciating, displaying, and selling original photographs as tangible objects.

Freund, as a photographer, handles photographs for her trade, while for Lejard, publications and graphic works counted. The coexistence of the two different attitudes toward the same subject in the same magazine exemplifies the complexity of photography’s identity in interwar France.

107 Freund’s thesis was favorably received by conservative critics as well as progressives. Fonds Freund at IMEC preserves numerous documents and letters regarding this matter. Supporters includes Claude de Santeuil, Georges Potonniée, André Malraux, Gaston Galllimard, and Jean Cassou.

108 Gisèle Freud, “La Photographie à l'Exposition,” Arts et métiers graphiques 62 (March 1938): 41. Translation is based on the English translation included in the same issue. “Il est probable que, pour un temps, la photographie monumentale cessera de nous faire plaisir. En fait, la photo telle que l’appareil la produit, et que notre œil la désire, est une image relativement petit, qui doit rester aussi maniable et classable, sinon plus, qu’un livre ou qu’n disque. C’est aussi qu’elle sert le mieux les idées et les sentiments qui l’ont fait naître et qu’elle peut faire naître à son tour.”

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Conclusion

Photography became a major concern of the modern era because of its integration into the emerging graphic media, such as illustrated magazines and publicity. Discovered by publishers, typographers, editors, and designers, including Charles Peignot, it gained awareness in the contemporary cultural milieu, which led to the emergence of the interwar

French photographic scene. However, this growing recognition thanks to the rise of graphisme conversely brought about a separation of photo and graphie by the mid-1930s because of the increasing demand to establish photography “in-itself.” Since it was those who were involved with printed matters who undertook the promotion of the medium, the separation of photography from the graphic context meant the loss of its supporting agents.

Publishers and editors advocated the development of photography only as far as it was connected to their primary profession. Once it became independent, they lost their cause to protect it. This is all the more ironic because the independence of photography from graphic contexts itself was pushed by the same group of people, as Peignot’s promotion of conservative photographic art in the mid- to late 1930s indicates.

Once photography was defined as a legitimate and independent field of art, it was ensnared in its complex entanglement with the grand tradition of French art. It is again ironic that the more it emphasized its autonomous status as a form of artistic creation equivalent to painting, the more its visual expression approached that of painting, and as a result, distanced photography from its own specific visual quality. The reappearance of Pictorialist visual repertoires and the conventional academic rules of tableau-making are clear manifestations of photography’s ambivalent status. Because of this suspension between graphic and artistic

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contexts, photography as an art form could gain appropriate institutional support neither in the high art venue nor in the graphic art venue. The 1936 exhibition at the Musée des Arts

Décoratifs was a rare occasion of photography being legitimately shown in a public art museum. However, the Musée des Arts “décoratifs” itself was a marginal institution as opposed to Paris’s museums of beaux-arts, which is indicated by the location of Pavillon de

Marsan at the end of the Palais du Louvre. The exhibition being held in this museum thus represents the problematic situation surrounding the medium in interwar France. Photography tried to establish its own identity, but it was an almost impossible mission because of its identity was torn apart between the two contexts of art and graphics.

This entanglement of photography in the web of art and graphics seen in the interwar period continued and directly affected its post-World War II situation. I conclude this dissertation with the description of post-World War II events as sequels to the development of interwar photography. A unique exhibition in 1955, Un Siècle de vision nouvelle, represented photography’s ambivalent relationship with other fields of art and art institutions in France.1

This show, held at the Galeries Monsart in Paris’s Bibliothèque nationale, was organized by

Jean Adhémar, the curator and future director of the Cabinet des Estampes of the library.

Unlike typical photography exhibitions, which almost exclusively present photographic prints,

Un Siècle de vision nouvelle displayed photographs from Daguerreotypes to contemporary works by Henri Cartier-Bresson along with other kinds of two-dimensional imagery, including paintings, drawings, prints, and even illustrated books. Adhémar juxtaposed these various materials side by side with photographic prints and arranged them into chronological

1 For details of this exhibition’s organization and content, see Dominique de Font-Réaulx, “The Bold Innovations of a French Exhibition: Un Siècle de Vision Nouvelle at the Bibliothèque Nationale, 1955,” Études photographiques 25 (May 2010), online version, https://journals.openedition.org/etudesphotographiques/3443

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sections. For instance, the largest section, “Temps de Courbet, Manet, Nadar,” placed works by these renowned painters alongside portrait photographs by Nadar to present the rise of

Realism and that of photography as two reciprocal phenomena in the 1850s.

Such juxtaposition is a strategy to underscore that photography is a legitimate field of art by proving that it shares the same “vision” with the contemporary artistic practices of a given period. At the same time, through comparing the reception of photography and other media, Adhémar aimed to demonstrate that there was a “vision specific to the photographer,” which is to be distinguished from “the vision of the painter.”2 In doing so, he aspired to delineate and define the originality of the photographer’s vision and legitimize its position in the realm of art without making photography a “humble servant” of the painting. Adhémar’s idea of the historically relevant “vision” repeated the essence of the thesis developed by

Waldemar George in his “Photographie: Vision du monde” in 1930, which suggests that the basic understanding of the medium did not change from the 1930s onward. The strategy of juxtaposition with other genres seen in the exhibition testifies to the fact that photography still needed to be defined based on its differences from other fields of art and not by its own merit.

As the French curator Dominique de Font-Réaulx discussed, this exhibition proposed an alternative narrative and understanding of photography that would relativize the canon established by Photography 1839–1937 held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.3 I would argue that the persistence of the same attitude from the interwar period also critically demonstrates France’s ambivalence toward the medium of photography and the delay of its integration into the art museum in the country.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

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It is noteworthy that Un Siècle de vision nouvelle was held in the same year as the notorious The Family of Man curated by Edward Steichen, then the director of MoMA’s department of photography (fig. C-1). Steichen’s exhibition presented an entirely different way of displaying images from both Photography 1839–1937 and Un Siècle de vision nouvelle. Enlarging, cropping, and montaging photographs in the manner of illustrated magazines on wall-sized displays, Steichen revitalized the hanging method of didactic exhibitions and photomurals favored by the interwar avant-gardes such as El Lissitzky and

Herbert Bayer. Steichen himself was also deeply involved in the interwar graphic art, having worked for several magazines published by Condé Nast, and he utilized that experience in curating this exhibition. Even before 1955, MoMA had organized exhibitions with similar display designs. Among others, Road to Victory in 1942, also curated by Steichen, assigned

Bayer as its display designer. Bayer, Moholy-Nagy, and other former Bauhäusler migrated to the United States after the school was shut down in 1933 and exerted a significant influence on the formation of the post-war American photographic and graphic art scenes. The hanging of The Family of Man emphasized the strong influence of these interwar avant-gardes in the

United States. Adhémar’s exhibition similarly has its roots in the interwar period. The striking contrast of the two exhibitions in the same year directly harks back to the differences between the interwar French “vision” on photography and that of the avant-garde.

Peignot’s career after the interwar period embodied the dominance of the graphic context over photography in his works. Despite his reputation as the principal promoter of photography in interwar France, Peignot was strangely reticent about his involvement with photography in the autobiographical notes, resumés, and interviews he wrote in the period

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after the Second World War.4 To reflect this fact, he almost withdrew from photography after the 1950s, with the exception of a few minor publishing projects, and concentrated on his primary business of typography and printing. This was not a simple slowdown and limitation of his activities but seems to be a spontaneous decision as he remained very active in these fields of graphic art until his death in 1983 at the age of eighty-six.

Arts et métiers graphiques ceased operations in 1939 with its last sixty-eighth issue released in May and the final Photographie 1940 in November. Peignot stayed in Paris during

World War II, and his business equipment remained intact, which enabled him to restart working as early as 1943. One of the first projects he directed was the Exposition des artistes du livre et de l'imprimerie (fig. C-2), held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs from December 5,

1944 to January 24, 1945. He was then appointed president of the Comité d'organisation des

Industries, Arts et Commerces du Livre (COAIACL) under the Vichy regime. This exhibition was organized under the aegis of this governmental administration. It was Peignot’s second large-scale graphic art show after Imprimerie section of the Paris World’s Fair in 1937.

Displaying book designs, posters, and advertisements by French (and France-based) artists and artisans, this exhibition was the ultimate realization of the ambitious plan for a graphic art show Peignot had proposed to Louis Metman for the same venue in 1933.

The late 1940s marked the final instance of Peignot’s engagement in photography with the release of the last Photographie in 1947 (fig. C-3). In the late 1940s, he attempted to resume what he had been doing in the pre-war period by restarting Arts et métiers graphiques and Photographie. While the former was given a new face as Soleils, an ultra-deluxe

4 Don Froissart, Box 5, Folder “Biographies,” Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris. Published interviews are as follows: “Deberny et Peignot: La Belle époque de la typographie,” Caractère 12 (December 1975), 32–53, Gérard Blanchard, “Georges Peignot: Créateur français de typographie moderne,” Caractère Noël 13 (1961), n.p., and “Les Peignots: Georges, Charles,” Communication et langages 59 (1984), 61–85.

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bibliophilic publication even richer than Arts et métiers graphiques, in 1949, Photographie

1947 appeared in the same format as the pre-war issues. Although its content was as eclectic as before, this volume reproduced some provocative and socially engaged documentary photographs from which the annual had distanced itself in the interwar period. Among other images, the album included an aerial photograph of bombardment during World War II provided by the photo agency Keystone (fig. C-4) and a murder scene (fig. C-5) taken by the leftist Dutch documentary photographer Cas Oorthuys, whose works were also exhibited in

The Family of Man. In the same period, Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques published its last three photo albums, Esquimaux: Voyage d'exploration au pôle magnétique nord (1938–1939)

(1946), Le Petit lion (1947), and Le Petit Dan (1948). While the latter was a reprise of Ylla’s animal photography portfolio of 1939, the former two reflected the growing interest in humanist photography represented by The Family of Man by reproducing a series of images of non-Westerners. If socially engaged documentary and humanist photography are two important movements consolidated in the period after World War II, the content of these

1940s publications indicates that Peignot was still connected to the international photographic scene. However, after 1948, the company ceased to work on photo albums and concentrated on graphic art in the 1950s onward.

One enterprise most symbolically represents the subordination of photography to graphic practices in Peignot’s post-war career. In the early 1950s, Peignot aspired to use photography for the sake of typography with the promotion of photocomposition, a method of assembling or setting types by photographing characters on film. In 1952, the same year as the establishment of the Cabinet des Estampes in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Deberny et Peignot partnered with the American company Photon, the major pioneer in this field. Peignot then

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introduced Photon’s machine for photocomposition under the name Lumitype to European markets in 1954. This incident symbolically concludes the relationship of photography and typography in his business from the interwar period onward.

It is interesting that Peignot seems to have attempted to publish Photographie in 1949.

The Cabinet des Estampes et Photographie at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France preserves ninety-two silver gelatin prints intended to be published in the unrealized Photographie

1949.5 Due to a lack of documentation, it is not clear today what prevented it from appearing in public. However, I assume that it was the last call for photography in Editions Arts et

Métiers Graphiques because of its content. About half of these photographs are humanist images similar to those reproduced in the preceding photo albums, capturing ordinary people of different races, social tiers, and professions, around the world (fig. C-6). The other half of the collection repeats typical visual repertoires of New Photography, such as extreme close- ups, plongée and contre-plongée views, photograms, and double-exposures (fig. C-7), reprising the most sensational and important contents of the first Photographie in 1930. This may be considered a retrospective gesture, looking back to the glory days of the album before closing its history. A drawing of the first Photographie’s cover with its signature Europe arrangement and reliure spirale figures at the top of the call for submission to this unrealized volume (fig. C-8), as if to prove the legitimacy of the current project.

More tellingly, its final image, by René-Jacques (fig. C-9), is a direct response to the first image in Photographie 1930 by Maurice Tabard (fig. 2-18). René-Jacques’s work captures the headlight of a car and its reflection, which recalls the camera lens photographed by Tabard about twenty years earlier. These two images form an imaginary double-page

5 “Arts et métiers graphiques 1949,” EP2-371 (1-4)-FOL, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection des Estempes et photographie.

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spread in terms of both form and content, and Peignot certainly imagined this visual echo. The reference to the first photograph in the album’s history on the final page of its last issue appears to be a decision to definitively close it, enclosing, between the two images, its own history along with the number of photographs and photographers featured in this album.

The ninety-two gelatin silver prints in the library’s collection seemed to have been almost untouched until I unpacked their cartons. We do not know where the original photographic prints gathered for the preceding Photographie have gone. These prints for an unpublished project are the only photographs that can be legitimately considered as materials that Peignot and the volume’s editorial members actually saw and touched. They survived because the project was suspended, whereas the photographs for published volumes did not because they completed their mission as materials for publication. These unpublished prints remain physical objects, while the published prints circulated as images to be reproduced.

These two trajectories testify to photography’s ever-fluctuating identity and its existence in plural form.

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Selected Bibliography

Primary sources

1. Archival Materials

Fonds Peignot, Bibliothèque Forney, Paris.

Papiers Jérôme Peignot, Cote 150705, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris.

Fonds Colette Peignot, NAF 2818131, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

Archives, Museé des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine, 1936, D1-209 and 210. Union des Artistes Modernes, ARCH-HERBST.

Archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Beaumont Newhall Papers. Exhibition Records, 60.2.

Fonds Tabard, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Fonds Vigneau, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, Paris.

Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Centemporaine (IMEC), Caen. Fonds Blanchard. Fonds Freund. Fonds Vox.

Juien Lévy Papers, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

2. Periodicals published by Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques (1927-1939)

Arts et métiers graphiques (1927-1939). Photographie (1930-1939, 1947). Photo-ciné-graphie (1933-1936). Publicité (1934-1939).

3. Publications of Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques and Deberny et Peignot (1925-1939, chronologically listed. “Albums” are underlined.)

Le Caracère dit de tradition. 1925.

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Le Sphinx. 1925.

Vox, Maximilien, ed. Divertissements typographiques. 1928-1933.

Hoffmann, Herbert, ed. Alphabets. 1929.

Seule une lettre n’est rien. 1929.

Cloche, Maurice. 60 Aspects de l’Exposition Coloniale 1931, Paris. 1931.

Brassaï. Paris de nuit. 1932.

Cloche, Maurice. Alphabet. 1932.

Curry, Manfred, ed. A Travers les nuages. 1932.

Petit, Georges. Madagascar. 1933.

Stone, Sasha. Femmes. 1933.

Vaillat, Léandre, ed. Seine chef-lieu Paris. 1934 and 1937.

Laroche, Henry-Jean. Cuisine. 1935.

Spécimen général. 1935.

Duval, Rémy, ed. 28 études de nus. 1936.

Exposition internationale de la photographie contemporaine. 1936.

Histoire de l’année par l’image: Evènement 1936. 1936 (Edited by Le Journal. Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques undertook only its printing).

Huygue, René, ed. Cent-trente chefs-d’œuvre de l’art français. 1937.

Farrère, Claude, ed. Gala du commerce et de l’industrie. 1937.

Les arts et techniques graphiques. 1937.

Les Maîtres de l’art indépendant. 1937.

L’Homme, l’éléctricité, la vie. 1937.

Mallon, J., R. Marichal, and C. Perrat, eds. L’Ecriture latine: De la capitale romaine à la miniscule. 1937.

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Schall, Roger. Paris de jour. 1937.

Verger, Pierre. Exposition 37: 60 photographies de Pierre Verger. 1937.

Brandt, Bill. Londres de nuit. 1938.

Ylla. Au Royaume de bêtes: Petits et grands. 1939.

Gichia, Léon and Lucien Mazenod, eds. Les Arts primitifs français: Art mérovingien-art carolingien-art roman. 1939.

4. French periodicals in the inerwar period

L’Amour de l’art. Art et médecine. L’Art vivant. Art et décoration. Beaux-Arts : Revue d’information artistique. Bulletin de la Société française de photographie. Cahiers d’art. Crapouillot. Documents. Gazette des beaux-arts. Gazette des bon temps. Jardin de mode. Jazz. La Révolution surrealiste. La Revue française de photographie. Le Photographe. Livre d’étrennes. Minotaure. Photo pour tous. Photo-Illustrations. Regard. Revue Matford. Vendre. Voigtländer. Voilà. Vu.

5. Books and Articles

Abraham, Pierre. “Photographie et témoignage.” In Photographie 1936, non paginated. Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1935.

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———. “De la statue au corps humain.” Arts et métiers graphqiues 50 (December 1935): 47- 51.

Albin Guillot, Laure. Micrographies décoratifs. Paris: Dreager, 1931.

———. Photographie publicitaire. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1933.

Alloend Bessand, H. “La Photographie est-elle un art?” Photo-ciné-graphie 15 (May 1934): 3-4.

Anonymous (Lucien Vogel?). “Remarques sur un nouveau journal illustré.” VU 1 (March 1928): 11-12.

Aragon, Louis. “Untitled.” In La Querelle du realisme, 55-68. Paris: Collection Commune, Editions Sociales Internaitonales, 1936.

Audin, Marius. Le Livre, son architecture, sa technique. Paris: G. Crès et Cie, 1924.

———. Le Livre, son illustration, sa décoration. Paris: G. Crès et Cie, 1926.

Auvillain, Robert. “Les Nouveautés techniques de l'année photographique.” In Photographie 1936, 127-131. Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1935.

Benjamin, Walter. “A Short History of Photography.” In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 199-216. Sedgwick: Leette's Island Books, 1980.

———.“The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 3 1935-1938, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 101-133. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Besson, Georges. Phototraphie français 1839-1936. Paris: Braun et Cie, 1936.

Blaizot, Georges. “L'Histoire de l'art et l'histoire du livre.” Arts et métiers graphiques 11 (May 1929): 661-663.

Blossfeldt, Karl. Urformen der Kunst. Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1928.

Bonnard, Abel. “Remarques sur l’art photographique.” Gazette des beaux-arts (1933): 300- 313.

Bost, Pierre, ed. Photographies modernes. Pars: Librairie des Arts Décoratifs, 1930.

Brassaï. “Technique de la photographie de nuit.” Arts et Métiers Graphiques 33 (January 1933): 24–27.

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Breton, André. Nadja. Paris: Gallimard, 1928.

Cassandre, A. M. “Le Bifur, caractère de publicité.” Arts et métiers graphiques 9 (January 1929): 578.

Chambertrand, Gilberd de. “L’Avenir de la photo.” Photo-ciné-graphie 12 (February 1934): 6-7.

Chéronnet, Louis. “La publicité moderne: la gloire du panneau.” L'Art vivant (August 1926): 618.

———. “La Publicité, art du XXe siècle.” L'Art vivant (March 1927): 9 .

———. “Pour un musée de la photographie.” In Photographie 1933-34, non paginated. Paris: Editions Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1933.

———. “Voyage autour de ma chambre.” Photo-ciné-graphie 12 (February 1934): 2-5.

———. “A Propos du ‘Narcisse’ de Paul Valéry.” Arts et métiers graphiques 51 (February 1936): 5–8.

———. “Photographie son histoire sentimentale.” L’Art vivant (March 1939): 44-45.

Cognia, Raymond. “La Photographie et la technique.” Photo-ciné-graphie 19 (September 1934): 1-3.

Cromer, Gabriel. “Il faut créer un musée de la Photographie. Où doit-il être? Que doit-il être? Quelles pourraient être ses premières richesse?” Bulletin de la Société française de photographie 1 (January 1925): 14-19.

Das Deutsche Lichtbild. Berlin: Robert & Bruno Schultz, 1927-1939.

Divoire, Fernand. “La mise en page des quotidiens.” Arts et métiers graphiques 2 (December 1927): 85-86, 88-89.

Dumas, Nora. “De l’interprétation personnelle.” Photo-ciné-graphie 25 (March 1935): 10-11.

Dupuy, R. L. “La Photographie matériau publicitaire.” Vendre 67 (June 1929): 439-441, 444- 445.

Duval, Rémy. “Surimpression.” Photo-ciné-graphie 15 (May 1934): 8-9.

———. “La photographie: Nouveau mode d'expression.” Photo-ciné-graphie 16 (June 1934): 1-3.

———. “La Mise en garde du paysage.” Photo-ciné-graphie 17 (July 1934): 1-3.

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———. “Pierre Boucher.” Arts et métiers graphiques 49 (October 1935): 46-50.

———. “Nora Dumas, paysanne.” Arts et Métiers Graphiques 50 (December 1935): 23–26.

———. “Herbert Matter.” Arts et métiers graphiques 51 (February 1936): 44-50.

Ehrenbourg, Ilya. Moi Parij. Moscow: Izogiz, 1933.

Encyclopédie photographique de l’art. Paris: Editions TEL, 1935.

Evans, Walker. “Reappearance of Photography.” Hound and Horn: A Harvard Miscellany 5, no. 1 (October-December 1931): 125-128.

Fargue, Léon-Paul. Banalité. Paris: Gallimard, 1928.

———. “Salut à la publicité.” Arts et métiers graphiques 45 (February 1935): 6-8.

Fels, Florent. “Le Premier salon indépendent de la photographie.” L’Art vivant (June 1928): 445.

———. “Photographie—nouvel organe.” L’Art vivant 147 (April 1931): 147.

François, Lucien. “De la photo dans l’affiche.” Photo-ciné-graphie 25 (March 1935): 14-15.

Freund, Gisèle. La Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle: Essai de sociologie et d’esthétique. Paris: La Maison des Amis des Livres, A. Monnier, 1936.

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280

Appendix

-List of Photographers in Photographie (1930-1940, 1947, and unpublished 1949)

List of Photographers in Photographie (1930-1947, and unpublished 1949)

Note 1 The names of country and city are as they appeared in Photographie 's captions. Note 2 "Total 1": Interwar period only, "Total 2": Published volumes, "Total 3": Including unpublished Photographie 1949

1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 1 Abbott, Berenice U.S.A. 1 1 1 3 3 3 2 Adam, Pierre France Paris 1 1 8 2 12 12 12 3 Adams, Ansel U.S.A. San Francisco 1 0 1 1 4 Adelys, René France Boulogne-sur-Seine 1 1 1 1 5 Alban France Paris 1 1 1 3 3 3 6 Albin Guillot, Laure France Paris 5 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 14 16 17 7 Alland, Alexander U.S.A. New York 1 2 3 3 3 8 Allgayer, Trudel Germany 1 1 1 1 9 Amson, Marcel 1 0 0 1 10 Anders et Cie Germany Berlin 2 2 2 2 11 Andrieux, Louis 1 0 0 1 12 Aral France Paris 2 2 2 2 13 Arnfeld, Julius Germany 5 2 5 5 7 14 Associated Press 12 1 13 13 13 15 Atelier Eidenbenz Switzerland 2 3 5 5 5 16 Atget, Eugène France Paris 2 2 2 2 17 Balocchi, Vicenzo Italy 1 1 2 2 2 18 Balogh, Rudolf Hungary 2 2 4 4 4 19 Barré, R. France Paris 2 3 5 5 5 20 Bartholomew, Ralph U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 21 Baumgarten, Hans 1 0 0 1 22 Baun, Greta U.K. 1 1 1 1 23 Bayer, Herbert Germany Berlin 3 1 4 4 4 24 Beaton, Cecil U.K. 2 2 1 1 6 6 6 25 Belcolor Lts. U.K. 1 1 1 1 26 Bellon, Denise France Paris 1 1 1 3 6 6 6 27 Bennekom, Lood van Netherlands 1 1 1 1 28 Bernard, Maurice France Paris 2 0 2 2 29 Bernhar, Ruth U.S.A. Chicago 1 1 1 1 30 Berssenbrugge, H Netherlands 1 1 1 1 31 Bertrand, Paul 1 0 0 1 32 Besnyo, Eva Netherlands Amsterdam 1 1 1 1 33 Biermann, Aenne Germany 2 7 1 10 10 10 34 Bing, Ilse France Paris 1 2 3 3 3 35 Bishiop, Edward U.K. 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 36 Blazer, Carel Netherlands Amsterdam 2 0 2 2 37 Block, Hug Netherlands Liesse 1 1 1 1 38 Block, Hugh France Paris 1 1 1 1 39 Blok, L. Netherlands 1 1 1 1 40 Blumenfeld, Erwin NL-FR(1938-) Paris(1938-) 3 2 2 2 1 10 10 10 41 Boiron 1 1 1 1 42 Boisgontier France Paris 1 1 1 1 43 Boitier, Albert France Paris 1 1 1 1 44 Bollaert, Edouard France Paris 1 1 1 1 45 Bollaert, Stephane France Paris 1 1 1 1 46 Borel, Raymond France Paris 1 0 1 1 47 Borel, Victor Germany 1 1 1 1 48 Boubat, Edouard 1 0 0 1 49 Bouchard, Thomas U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 50 Boucher, Pierre France Paris 1 2 3 2 3 1 4 1 16 16 17 51 Bourke-White, Margaret U.S.A. 1 1 2 2 2 52 Bovis, Marcel France Paris 1 3 3 9 5 1 1 21 22 23 53 Brandt, Bill U.K. London 3 1 1 1 3 2 2 11 13 13 54 Bransten, Ellen 1 0 0 1 55 Brassaï France Paris 2 1 8 5 2 1 16 18 19 56 Breslauer, Marianne Germany 1 1 1 3 3 3 57 Bresson, Robert France Paris 1 1 1 1 58 Breuninger, Mugg Germany 1 2 3 3 3 59 Bricarelli, Stefano Italy 2 3 5 5 5 60 Brill, Fritz Germany 1 1 1 1 61 Brodsky, M France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 62 Bruehl, Anton U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 63 Bucowich, Mario von France Paris 1 1 1 1 64 Burchartz, Max Germany Essen 2 2 2 2 65 Byron Company Inc. U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 66 Caillaud, Louis France Paris 1 1 2 4 4 4 67 Campbell, Estelle U.S.A. New York 2 1 3 3 3 68 Capa, Robert 2 0 0 2 69 Cartier-Bresson, Henri France Paris 1 2 3 3 3 70 De Carvalho, Arthur Chine 1 1 2 2 2 71 Casartelli 1 1 1 1 72 Casparius, Hans Germany 1 1 1 1 73 Casson U.K. 2 2 2 2 74 Castelli, Wilhelm Germany Lubeck 1 2 1 1 3 75 Chambertrand, Gilbert de France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 76 Cerra, Marino Italy 1 1 1 1 77 Chadourne, Georges France Paris 1 0 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 78 Chenu, G. 1 0 0 1 79 Charpie, Jean France Lausanne 1 0 1 1 80 Chevalier, Yvonne France Paris 2 3 5 5 5 81 Chin-San-Long Chine 1 1 2 4 4 4 82 Churchill, Bob U.S.A. Los Angeles 1 1 1 1 2 83 Cloche, Maurice France Paris 2 7 1 9 9 10 84 Collection Barthélemy 1 1 1 1 85 Collection Garschel 6 6 6 6 86 Collection G. Sirot 18 18 18 18 87 Collins U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 88 Collins, Dahl et Geoffrey U.K. London 2 2 2 2 89 Content, Marjolie U.S.A. 4 4 4 4 90 Contremoulin, Prof. France Paris 4 4 4 4 91 Cordier, E.-H. France Mulhouse 1 0 1 1 92 Countent U.S.A. 3 3 3 3 93 Cousland, Gilbert U.K. 1 1 1 1 94 Croy, Dr. Germany 2 2 2 2 95 Dahl, Hendrick U.S.A. 2 2 2 2 96 Dahl-Wolfe, Louise U.S.A. New York 1 2 3 3 3 97 Darlein France Paris 1 1 1 1 98 Deford 1 1 1 1 99 Demilly, Antoine 1 0 0 1 100 Deney, Anthony 1 0 0 1 101 Desfossés-Néogravure 2 2 2 2 102 Deutsch, H.E France Paris 1 1 1 1 103 Deutsch, Stephen U.S.A. 1 5 1 1 6 7 104 D'Heilly, Marcelle France Paris 1 0 1 1 105 Dienes, André de France Paris 1 2 1 1 3 106 Dietrich, Siegfried Germany 1 1 1 1 107 Dijkgraaf-Exner Netherlands The Hague 1 0 1 1 108 Dino, André France Paris 1 0 1 1 109 Dobbelman Ph. Switzerland 1 1 1 1 110 Doisneau, Robert France Paris 2 2 0 2 4 111 Dubois, Jacques France Paris 2 1 2 3 3 112 Dora Maar France 1 1 1 1 2 113 Dulovitz Hungary 2 2 2 2 114 Dumas, Nora France Paris 4 2 1 2 1 3 4 2 1 1 2 20 21 23 115 Dumas-Satigny France Paris 1 1 2 4 4 4 116 Durand, André France Paris 1 1 3 5 5 5 117 Durst, André France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 118 Duval, Rémy France Paris 3 3 2 1 1 2 2 12 14 14 119 Eberhardt, D.F Netherlands 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 120 Ecce Photo France Paris 1 1 1 1 121 Edgerton U.S.A. Massachussets 1 0 1 1 122 Elshoud France Paris 1 0 1 1 123 Engesser, F. 1 0 0 1 124 Eric Livet, Jacques France 1 1 1 1 125 Errell Germany Berlin 1 1 1 1 126 Fachetti, Paul France Paris 1 0 1 1 127 Féher, E France Paris 2 1 1 3 3 4 128 Féher-Fult, Gertrude Switzerland Territet 1 0 1 1 129 Feininger, Andreas Germany 2 1 3 6 6 6 130 Fels, Florent France Paris 1 1 1 1 131 Fernandez, A France 1 1 1 1 132 Finsler, Hans Germany 1 4 5 5 5 133 Flannery, Henry U.S.A. 3 2 3 3 5 134 De Flaugerques, Philiberte France Paris 1 1 1 1 135 Flöter, Hubertus Germany 2 2 2 2 136 Forest, Nila France Paris 1 1 1 1 137 Fouquet, Gaetan France Paris 2 2 2 2 138 France Presse 3 3 3 3 139 Freund, Giséle France Paris 1 1 1 1 140 Fréson, R. 1 0 0 1 141 Fridliand Russia 1 1 1 1 142 Froebel, Hannes Switzerland 2 1 3 3 3 143 Fuku, Mitsutaro U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 144 Fuld, Gertrude France Paris 2 1 3 3 3 145 Gautherot, Marcel France Paris 3 2 2 7 7 7 146 Géo-Blanc 1 1 1 1 147 Gorny, Hein Germany Berlin 1 11 7 3 4 2 1 2 29 29 31 148 Gorsky France Paris 0 0 0 149 Gos, Emile Switzerland 2 3 6 1 11 12 12 150 Gottlieb, Marie Czechoslovakia 1 1 1 1 151 Greeven, Werner France Paris 2 2 2 2 152 Gremmler, Karl-Theodore Germany 3 3 3 3 6 153 Grimm, Arthur 2 1 2 2 3 154 Grun France Paris 1 1 1 1 155 Guida France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 156 Gutschow Germany 2 1 3 3 3 157 Guttman, F.J. 1 0 0 1 158 Haab, François France Paris 1 1 1 1 159 Halpern, Julius, Dr. Austria Vienna 1 1 1 1 160 Halsmann, P. France Paris 1 1 1 1 161 Harris, Herberg France Paris 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 162 Hartleben, Ursula U.K. 1 1 1 1 163 Havinden, John U.K. 2 1 3 3 3 164 Heidersberger, Heinrich DK-GE(1937-) Berlin 1 2 2 1 6 6 6 165 Heiniger, E.A Switzerland Zurich 1 1 1 1 166 Henle, Fritz U.S.A. New York 8 1 0 8 9 167 Henri, Florence France Paris 2 2 1 2 1 2 1 11 11 11 168 Herdeg Switzerland 1 1 1 1 169 Hirsh U.S.A. Los Angeles 1 1 1 1 170 Hoinkis, Ewald Germany 2 1 1 4 4 4 171 Hoppé, Emile Otto U.K. 1 1 2 2 2 172 Horst P. Horst France Paris 1 2 1 1 4 5 5 173 Hoyningen-Huene, Georges France Paris 6 5 4 5 20 20 20 174 Huber, Erika Germany 1 1 1 3 3 3 175 Hurault, Ch. France Paris 2 2 2 2 176 Hurrel, George U.S.A. Hollywood 2 1 3 3 3 177 Ichac, Pierre France Paris 1 1 1 3 3 3 178 Imboden France Paris 1 1 1 1 179 Imprimerie L. Delaporte 2 2 2 2 180 International News Photo U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 181 Itani, Ichiro U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 182 Izis France Paris 2 1 0 2 3 183 Jacmar France Cannes 1 1 1 1 184 Jahan, Pierre France Paris 1 4 1 4 2 10 10 12 185 Jakob Austria 1 1 1 1 186 Jamet, Pierre France Paris 2 1 2 3 3 187 Jenicek, Jiri Czechoslovakia Prague 1 0 1 1 188 Juliette France Paris 1 1 1 1 189 Kahan, Roger France 1 1 1 1 190 Kanaga, Consuelo U.S.A. 1 2 3 3 3 191 Kardas GE-FR (1933-) Paris 1 1 1 1 2 6 6 6 192 Karel-Kleij Netherlands 1 1 1 1 193 Karkel et D'Asfeld D.A.K 1 1 1 1 194 Karquel, G France Mougins 1 4 1 5 6 6 195 De Kaskel, Sybille France Paris-Toulon (1939) 2 1 1 1 5 5 5 196 Kato, Masamitsu Japan 1 1 1 1 197 Keerl, Hans Switzerland Basel 1 0 1 1 198 Kéfer Dora Maar France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 199 Keighley, Alexander U.K. 1 1 1 1 200 Keller, Dieter Germany Sonnenberg 3 3 3 3 201 Kertész, André France Paris 5 3 1 1 10 10 10 202 Kéfer, Pierre France 1 1 1 1 203 Kessler, Rudolf Germany 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 204 Kesting Germany 1 1 2 2 2 205 Keystone France Paris 1 4 1 5 5 206 Knight U.K. 1 1 1 1 207 Kœhli, Ernest Switzerland Zurich 2 0 2 2 208 Kollar, François France Paris 1 1 1 1 4 4 4 209 Korth, Fred G U.S.A. 1 1 2 1 2 7 7 7 210 Kozianka Netherlands 1 1 1 1 211 Kramer, Rudolf Germany 1 1 2 2 2 212 Krohn France Paris 1 1 1 1 213 Krohn, Dr. B Czechoslovakia 1 1 1 1 214 Krull, Germaine France Paris 2 2 1 1 6 6 6 215 Lacheroy, Henri France Paris 1 2 2 1 1 1 7 8 8 216 Lallemant, Robert France Pars 1 1 1 1 217 Landau, Ergy France Paris 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 9 9 9 218 Lasserre, Juliette France Paris 2 1 1 1 5 5 5 219 Laughlin, Clarence-John U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 220 Lavenson, Alma 1 0 0 1 221 Leavitt, Bob U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 222 Lekaer, Ingemann P. U.S.A. New York 2 2 2 2 223 Le Charles France Paris 2 2 2 2 224 Lefébure, Pierre France Paris 1 1 1 1 225 Lemare, Jacques France Paris 1 1 1 1 226 Léonhardt, René Germany Berlin 1 1 1 1 227 Le Pennetier France Paris 1 1 1 1 228 Le Prat, Thérèse France Paris 1 1 1 1 229 Lerski, Helmar Germany 1 1 1 1 230 Levitt, Helen U.S.A. New York 1 0 1 1 231 Lohse, Remie U.S.A. New York 2 3 2 7 7 7 232 List, Herbert GE-FR (1938-) Paris 1 1 2 1 5 10 10 10 233 Livet, J.E France 1 1 1 1 234 Livet, Roger France Paris 1 1 1 1 235 Logan U.K. 2 2 4 4 4 236 Lorelle, Lucien France Paris 1 1 1 1 237 Lotar, Eli France Paris 3 2 5 5 5 238 Lukas, Jan France Paris 2 2 2 2 239 Lukas, Jean Czechoslovakia 2 2 2 2 240 Lukas, Jean, Pawel-Barchan France Paris 1 1 1 1 241 Man Ray France Paris 3 4 2 2 1 3 3 18 18 18 242 Machatschek, M,K France Biarritz (1939) 1 2 1 4 4 4 243 Manzon, Jean 1 0 0 1 244 Marey France Paris 1 1 1 1 245 Marie et Borel France Paris 1 3 1 4 4 5 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 246 Martin, Germaine Switzerland Lausanne 1 1 2 2 2 247 Martin, Georges France Paris 1 3 1 5 5 5 248 Marumo, Shinichi Japan 1 1 1 1 249 Masclet, Daniel France Paris 1 3 1 4 4 250 Matter, Fred 1 1 1 1 251 Matter, Herbert Switzerland 5 1 6 6 6 252 Maywald, Willy France Paris 3 1 2 4 4 6 253 McKinney, Richard Australia 6 0 6 6 254 Meerson, Harry O France Paris 3 1 2 2 2 8 10 10 255 Michaud France Paris 1 1 1 1 256 Michel, Victor 2 2 2 2 257 Miller, Lee France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 258 Miré 2 2 2 2 259 De Mire (Plaisir de France) France Paris 3 1 4 4 4 260 Moholy Nagy, Laszlo Germany 3 1 4 4 4 261 Moholy, Lucia Germany 1 1 1 1 262 Monneret, Jean France Paris 2 2 2 2 263 Monnier, G France 2 2 2 2 264 Moral, Jean France Paris 4 5 5 3 2 19 19 19 265 Morgan, Barbara U.S.A. New York 3 0 3 3 266 Mounnier, G France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 267 Mouriquand, Edouard France Lyon 1 1 0 1 2 268 Myren, John Norway 1 1 1 1 269 Munkacsi, Martin Germany 1 8 6 1 16 16 16 270 Nadar 4 1 5 5 5 271 Namuth, Hans France 1 2 1 1 3 272 Natori Alliance Photo France Paris 2 2 2 2 273 Neddenhausen, Elsbeth Germany Berlin 2 2 2 2 274 Nelson, Lusha U.S.A. 3 3 3 3 275 Neogravure France Paris 1 1 1 1 276 Ney, Rosy France Paris 3 1 1 5 5 5 277 New York Times U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 278 Newhall, Beaumont U.S.A. New York 1 0 1 1 279 Nevrasskoff Russia 1 1 1 1 280 Niclas, Yolla France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 281 Observatoire de Meudon France 4 4 4 4 282 Ogle, Charles U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 283 Okamoto, Hisao Japan Kobe 1 1 2 2 2 284 O.N.M France Paris 1 1 1 1 285 Oorthuys, Cas Netherlands Amsterdam 2 1 0 2 3 286 Ortiz, Echague Spain 2 2 2 2 287 Ostier, André 1 0 0 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 288 Outerbridge, Paul U.S.A. 3 3 3 3 289 Painlevé, Jean France Paris 1 1 1 1 290 Papillon France Paris 2 2 2 4 4 291 Paris, Gaston France Paris 2 2 4 4 4 292 Paris-Soir 1 1 1 1 293 Parry, Roger France Paris 6 1 2 2 1 12 12 12 294 P.A.S. 6 6 6 6 295 Pauli, Jörg 1 0 0 1 296 Pecsi, Joseph Hungary 1 1 1 1 297 Pearlman, A. U.K. London 1 0 1 1 298 Peiffer Wattenphul, Max Germany 3 3 3 3 299 Pellerin, Karin France Paris 2 1 3 3 3 300 Penn, Irving U.S.A. New York 2 0 2 2 301 Petroussof, G Russia 1 1 1 1 302 Photo Aérienne Michaud France Paris 1 1 1 1 303 Photo-Arax France Paris 0 0 0 304 Photo Globe France Paris 1 1 1 1 305 Photo-Illustration France Paris 1 1 1 1 306 Photo Intran France Paris 1 1 1 1 307 Photo-Union Germany 1 1 1 1 308 Photo Wide World France Paris 2 2 2 2 309 Platt-Lynes, Georges U.S.A. 2 5 2 1 1 1 5 12 17 17 310 De Poncins France Paris 1 1 2 2 2 311 Popper, Grete Czechoslovakia Prague 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 9 9 10 312 Pottier, Philippe France Paris 2 1 1 5 1 2 1 1 12 13 14 313 Powell, G Australia Cremorne 1 1 1 1 314 Powell, Peter France Paris 4 3 7 7 7 315 Poznanski, Robert France Paris 1 1 1 1 316 Prager, Willy Germany 1 3 2 6 6 6 317 Prevel, Jean 1 0 0 1 318 Proch, Camille France Paris 1 1 1 1 319 Publiphoto France Strasbourg 2 0 2 2 320 Quack, G.H.A. 1 0 0 1 321 Quigley, Edward U.S.A. 1 1 1 2 2 322 Radowski, F.H U.S.A. 2 2 2 2 323 Ragot, Henri France Paris 3 3 3 3 324 Rambucher, August Germany 1 1 1 1 325 Renger-Patzsch, Albert Germany 1 2 1 3 3 4 326 Real, Marc France Paris 3 3 3 3 327 Reissmann, Jean France Paris 2 4 2 2 6 328 Reissner, Georges France 2 1 3 3 3 329 Reisz, André 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 330 Reisz, Irene Hungary 1 1 1 1 331 Relang France Paris 2 2 2 2 332 René-Jacques France Paris 1 2 1 1 1 8 1 6 14 15 333 Ridenti, Lucio Italy Turin 2 0 2 2 334 Rieder, Rod France Paris 2 1 3 3 3 335 Riederer, Renata Germany Munich 1 1 1 1 336 Riesse 1 1 1 1 337 Riethof, Willy Austria Vienna 2 1 2 2 3 338 Ringl U.K. 1 1 1 1 339 Ringl + Pit Germany 1 1 1 1 340 Ritchey, GW U.S.A. US 3 3 3 3 341 Roberston Denmark 1 1 1 1 342 Robinson, Arthur U.S.A. Hawaii 1 1 1 1 343 Rogi André France Paris 1 2 2 1 1 2 6 7 9 344 Roh, Franz Germany 1 1 1 1 345 Rohde, Werner Germany 1 1 1 1 2 346 Rona, I Netherlands 2 1 2 2 3 347 Ronis, Willy France Paris 1 2 1 3 3 348 Rosenstiehl, Albert France Alsace 1 1 1 1 349 Roubierl, Jean France 1 1 1 1 3 4 4 350 Rübelt, Lothar Germany 1 1 1 1 351 Rubin, Eugène France Paris 1 1 1 1 2 352 Rumbucher, August 3 3 3 3 353 Saad, Georges France Paris 1 1 1 1 3 3 4 354 Sauvageot, Y. France Haute-Savoie 1 0 1 1 355 Savitry, Emile France Paris 1 1 3 1 2 6 6 8 356 Schirner Germany 1 1 1 1 357 Schall,Roger France Paris 1 1 4 6 6 6 358 Scherdel Germany 1 1 1 1 359 Scherl-Rapho 1 1 1 1 360 Schuftan, Alice Germany 1 1 1 3 3 3 361 Schuh Switzerland 3 3 3 3 362 Schultz France Saint-Mandé 1 1 1 1 363 Seiden, Gustave Hungary 1 1 1 1 364 Seidenstücker, Friedrich Germany 2 1 1 4 4 4 365 Seruzier France Paris 1 0 1 1 366 Servant, René France Paris 1 1 1 1 367 Sheeler, Charles U.S.A. 3 1 4 4 4 368 Shu-Chong, Lin Chine Shanghai 1 1 1 1 369 Sise, Hazen U.K. 2 2 2 2 370 Sommerset Murray, John U.K. 2 2 2 2 371 Sougez, Emmanuel France Paris 4 3 2 2 1 2 5 2 1 4 3 26 29 29 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 372 Sougez, Claude France Paris 1 1 1 1 373 De Spina France Paris 1 1 1 1 374 Stankowski, Anton Germany 1 1 1 1 375 Stefani, Bruno Italy 1 2 2 3 5 5 376 Steichen, Edward U.S.A. 7 4 11 11 11 377 Steiner, André France Paris 2 3 1 2 8 8 8 378 Steinhoff, Ilse Germany Berlin 3 3 3 3 379 Stone, Sasha Belguim 1 1 1 1 380 Stoppel France Lausanne 2 0 2 2 381 Studio Deutsch France Paris 1 1 1 1 382 Studio Grün 2 0 0 2 383 Studio Lorelle France Paris 2 2 2 2 384 Studio Reiss France Paris 1 1 1 1 385 Studio Ylla France Paris 2 2 2 2 386 Studio Dorvin 1 1 1 1 387 Stüwe, Care Germany Bielefeld 3 3 3 3 388 Süss, H. 1 0 0 1 389 Tabard, Maurice France Paris 8 5 1 1 1 16 16 16 390 Tannenwald France Paris 1 1 1 1 391 Tietgens, R. U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 392 Tracol France 6 6 6 6 393 Tuefferd, Francois France 1 2 3 3 3 394 Ulmann, Doris U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 395 Umbo (Otto Umbehr) Germany 3 2 4 9 9 9 396 Unger, Paul Germany 1 1 2 2 2 397 Unvalla, S.N. India 1 1 1 1 398 Universal Film 7 7 7 7 399 Vadas, Erno Hungary 1 3 1 5 5 5 400 Vals, Pierre France Paris 1 1 1 1 401 Van de Poll, Willem France Paris 2 2 2 2 402 Van Moekerken, Emile 2 0 0 2 403 Verger, Pierre France Paris 1 1 3 2 5 12 12 12 404 Verneuil, Maurice 1 1 1 1 2 405 Vertaroyez 1 0 0 1 406 Vigneau, André France Paris 2 3 1 1 1 8 8 8 407 Viollet-Schostal, R France Paris 2 0 2 2 408 Vogel, Emil 2 0 0 2 409 Vogel, Lucien France Paris 2 1 1 4 4 4 410 Volgensinger Switzerland 1 1 1 1 411 Vorobeichic France 2 2 2 2 412 Vu 1 1 1 1 413 Wätcher, Clara Hungary 1 1 1 1 1933 Name Country City 1930 1931 1932 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1947 1949 Total 1 Total 2 Total 3 -34 414 Watson, E. 1 0 0 1 415 Weller, Dr Germany 3 3 3 3 416 Weller, Peter Germany Berlin 2 0 0 2 417 Weltzer, Jean France Paris 1 1 1 1 2 418 Weston, Brett U.S.A. 1 1 1 1 419 Weston, Edward U.S.A. San Francisco 1 2 1 1 5 5 5 420 White, Minor U.S.A. San Francisco 1 0 1 1 421 Wide World 2 2 2 2 422 Widmayer, Julius Germany 2 2 2 2 423 Willinger Germany 2 2 2 2 424 Wolfe, Paul Germany 1 1 1 1 425 Wolfensinaer, Michel 1 0 0 1 426 Wolgensinger Switzerland Zurich 3 0 3 3 427 Wong, Lewis L Chine 1 1 2 2 2 428 Wynne, Nancy (Mrs. B Newhall) U.S.A. New York 1 1 1 1 429 X… 1 1 1 1 430 Yarnall Richie, Robert 1 1 1 1 431 Ygnatovitch Russia 1 1 1 1 432 Ylla France Paris 1 2 2 4 3 12 12 12 433 Yva Germany 1 1 1 1 434 Zielke, Willy Germany 2 3 4 1 10 10 10 435 Zoemulder, Stref 1 0 0 1 436 Zuber, René France 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 10 10 11 437 Zuca France Paris 1 1 1 1 438 Zucca, André 1 1 1 1 2 439 Anonymous 2 2 2 2 440 Collection Maurice Cloche 1 1 1 1 441 Collection Roger Pétin 1 1 1 1 442 Collection Lucien Vogel 1 1 1 1 443 Unknown 4 1 5 5 5 Total 129 125 117 120 125 133 113 111 147 131 119 92 1251 1370 1462