A Thwarted History. The Museum of Photography in France (1839-1945).
Macula| N° d'inventaire | 23300 |
| Format | 16 x 24 |
| Détails | 526 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2017 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782865890965 |
From the disclosure of the process in 1839 until the end of the Second World War, many amateurs and professionals campaigned for the creation of a photography museum. There is evidence of multiple projects of varying scale which, although they were not successful, were the places where the hopes quickly associated with photography crystallized. The hitherto little-known history of these various projects is pervaded by a fundamental hesitation, linked to the ambivalent status of the photographic image: should we create a museum of photographs, conceived along the lines of a museum of photographic copies and reproductions, or a museum for photography, its history, its technique, its artistic character? Eléonore Challine traces this slow and delicate process of legitimizing the new medium within the French institutional sphere. This story is driven by unique personalities, all convinced of the need to preserve photography and give it a home, such as Louis Cyrus Macaire, Léon Vidal, Louis Chéronnet, Raymond Lécuyer and Gabriel Cromer, whose fabulous collection left for the United States in November 1939 on one of the last American liners leaving France, leaving the bitter taste of an irremediable loss. A gallery of portraits of these forgotten figures was necessary to breathe new life and depth into this milieu that works for the museum, going beyond the strictly "photographic" world. Conceived in the form of a vast and meticulous investigation, in search of archives and unpublished written or visual traces of these projects, this work unfolds, like a bourgeois drama, in five acts. Four acts to narrate its thwarted history from the 1840s to the 1930s, then a final act on the history this time circumvented, studying on the one hand the ephemeral forms of the photographic museum that are retrospective exhibitions and, on the other hand, its portable forms like the book.
From the disclosure of the process in 1839 until the end of the Second World War, many amateurs and professionals campaigned for the creation of a photography museum. There is evidence of multiple projects of varying scale which, although they were not successful, were the places where the hopes quickly associated with photography crystallized. The hitherto little-known history of these various projects is pervaded by a fundamental hesitation, linked to the ambivalent status of the photographic image: should we create a museum of photographs, conceived along the lines of a museum of photographic copies and reproductions, or a museum for photography, its history, its technique, its artistic character? Eléonore Challine traces this slow and delicate process of legitimizing the new medium within the French institutional sphere. This story is driven by unique personalities, all convinced of the need to preserve photography and give it a home, such as Louis Cyrus Macaire, Léon Vidal, Louis Chéronnet, Raymond Lécuyer and Gabriel Cromer, whose fabulous collection left for the United States in November 1939 on one of the last American liners leaving France, leaving the bitter taste of an irremediable loss. A gallery of portraits of these forgotten figures was necessary to breathe new life and depth into this milieu that works for the museum, going beyond the strictly "photographic" world. Conceived in the form of a vast and meticulous investigation, in search of archives and unpublished written or visual traces of these projects, this work unfolds, like a bourgeois drama, in five acts. Four acts to narrate its thwarted history from the 1840s to the 1930s, then a final act on the history this time circumvented, studying on the one hand the ephemeral forms of the photographic museum that are retrospective exhibitions and, on the other hand, its portable forms like the book.