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Paris!

· Paris,France,Photography,Paul Almasy,Brassaï

We are now close to the end of the 2024 Olympic Games. For the last two weeks many of us were glued to our televisions, computers, phones, i-pads, etc. watching events as they unfolded in the beautiful city of Paris. It is certainly one of my favourite cities to visit. Glenda and I first went there in 1974, and we went to an establishment that had quite poor food but a fabulous floorshow – the Moulin Rouge!

So, a musing focused on Paris seems quite appropriate.

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Paul Almasy Paris; by Klaus Kleinschmidt and Axel Schmidt; Prestel Verlag, Munich, Germany, 2001.

Paul Almasy (1906 - 2003) was a Hungarian-born Swiss photographer known for his documentary and portrait photography. He grew up in a family of artists and turned to photography in the 1930s. Almasy worked as a photojournalist for various newspapers and magazines in Europe, covering events such as the Spanish Civil War and World War II. He was also known for his portraits of famous artists, writers, and intellectuals, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.

After the war, Paris became the focus of his life and in 1956, Almasy took French citizenship. From 1972 to 1989, he held professorships in Paris at the Sorbonne University and at the Center de Perfectionnement des Journalistes.

This book includes not only beautifully observed scenes of everyday street, café, and market life from the time of the German occupation until the late 1960s, but also images of victory celebrations and mass demonstrations, scenes from within the halls of power and intimate portraits of famous artists at work.

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The original edition of this work, Paris de nuit, was published in 1933. In 1987, a new edition was printed using Brassaï’s original plates. English translation was originally published in France as Paris after Dark by Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1993 by Flammarion.

Brassaï (1899 – 1984) was a Hungarian–French photographer, sculptor, medalist, writer, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris beginning between the world wars.

Roaming Paris streets by night in the early 1930s, Brassaï created arresting images of the city’s dramatic nocturnal landscape. The back alleys, Métro stations, and bistros he photographed are by turns hauntingly empty or peopled by prostitutes, laborers, thugs, and lovers. For Brassaï, 1932 and 1933 were the most important years in his life: they were the years in which he met Picasso, published Paris de nuit – his first book – and collaborated with the Surrealists on the magazine Minotaure. The book has 62 black-and-white duotone photographs.

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The printing, engraving, and binding were all done in Lausanne and the volume has actual black and white photos of various sizes tipped in on heavy stock paper.

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 – 1986) was a French photographer and painter, known for his photographs of automobile races, planes and female Parisian fashion models, very much the focus of the photos in this album. Born in Courbevoie in western Paris to a wealthy family, Lartigue started taking photographs when he was seven. He photographed his friends and family at play – running and jumping; racing home-built race cars; making kites, gliders as well as aeroplanes; and climbing the Eiffel Tower. He was one of the first artists to use the Kodak Brownie camera for snapshots. He also photographed sport events, such as the Coupe Gordon Bennett and the French Grand Prix, early flights of aviation pioneers such as Gabriel Voisin, Louis Blériot, Hubert Latham, Louis Paulhan, and Roland Garros. He also captured in his camera, tennis players such as Suzanne Lenglen at the French Open tennis championships.

Many of his initial, famous photographs were originally captured in stereo, for example seen in Hidden Depths but he also produced a vast number of images in all formats and media including glass plates in various sizes, autochromes, and film. He developed his own photographs from a young age.

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Paris Under the Occupation; by Gilles Perrault and Pierre Azema; The Vendome Press, New York, 1989.

On June 14th, 1940, after their great Blitzkrieg through Holland and Belgium, the first Nazi troops arrived in Paris. France capitulated and Europe’s most beautiful city was intact but occupied by the enemy. The highways to the South were choked with people, and the streets of Paris were deserted by a terrified population. This amazing book is an illustrated record of how an occupied city lived, from the arrival of the first battalion to the ignominious flight of the last Nazi soldier.

This extremely controversial account of France’s role and daily life in World War II contains hundreds of photographs – many never seen before – from French and German archives that document the extent of the compromises made by the conquered. Some Parisians collaborated, others resisted, but the majority continued to live their lives as best they could.