French photographer Gaston Paris (1903-1964), whose work is being rehabilitated, has put together an impressive collection thanks to a powerful style and an incredible variety of topics, starting with the festive 1930’s until the difficulties of the post-World War II period. Both a humanist photographer and a photo-reporter, Gaston Paris is above all an illustrative photographer who documented his time most often with humour and empathy. His black and white photographs seem to describe the world as a theatre, showing scenes of love, joy but also labour or even expectations and hope. Daily life scenes meet entertainment ones and even re-enactments of fights and crimes. Portraits of anonymous stand next to shots of celebrities, also merging with images of wax mannequins, whose disarticulated bodies are reminiscent of Surrealism.
Circus. Trapeze. France, around 1935.
available
Chalais-Meudon airplane wind tunnel. Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), 1936.
available
Ballet at the Paris Opera, around 1937-1938.
available
Rose window and worker in backlight at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, 1935.
available
Worker on a construction site. France, 1938.
available
Chalais-Meudon airplane wind tunnel. Meudon (Hauts-de-Seine), 1936.
availableHis cinema experience led him to shoot his models with frontal and direct lighting, modelling their bodies and faces with the effects of shadow and light. There is something sculptural in Gaston Paris’ photographic style. Shapes are monumentalized, volumes are sublimated. His images of urban and industrial landscapes, always very graphic, match perfectly in a square frame determined by his systematic choice of a Rolleiflex camera.
Factory chimney. Paris, around 1935.
available
Worker in a railway workshop, working on the mechanism of a steam locomotive. France, around 1945.
available
Viaduct of Austerlitz. Barrage of barges on the Seine during a strike of bargemen. Paris, 1940.
available
Aerial view of the Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre. Paris (18th district), 1936.
available
Eiffel Tower. Paris (7th district), around 1945.
available
Eiffel Tower. Paris (7th district), around 1955.
available
Couple. Paris, around 1950.
available
Backstage at the Opéra Garnier. Paris, around 1937-1938.
available
Closing time of a café. Paris, around 1935.
available
Sailors. Brest (Finistère), around 1935.
available
Policeman in the storm. Paris, around 1940.
available
Guard at the prison of Aniane (Hérault), penitentiary for children. 1946.
available
Boxing match. France, around 1937-1938.
available
Circus. "Les Clerans", duo of French trapeze artists Charlie Gérardin (aerialist) and Stéphane Hégédus (carrier). France, around 1936.
available
Circus. Lasso by Sylvie Carson. France, around 1935.
available
Circus. Knife throwing. France, around 1935.
available
Circus. Knife throwing. France, around 1935.
available
Fairground, naked dancers with a snake. Paris, 1935.
available
Circus. Lora Rode, the woman with the horse. France, around 1937-1939.
available
Circus, trapeze artists. France, around 1935.
available
Miss Dora (Madame Contal), contortionist dancer. Paris, around 1935.
available
Lodges of the Folies-Bergère. Paris, 1935.
available
Dance School of the Paris Opera. Students of Albert Aveline's class. Paris, around 1937-1938.
available
Lodges of the Folies-Bergère. Paris, 1935.
available
International Exhibition of Surrealism. Mannequin of Sonia Mossé (deceased in 1943). Galerie des Beaux-Arts of Georges Wildenstein, 140 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Paris (8th district), January 1938.
available
The wax figure of Violette Nozières (1915-1966) is disassembled and replaced by that of Serge Alexandre Stavisky (1888-1934). Musée Grévin, Paris, around 1934.
available
Nude study. France, around 1937-1939.
available
International Exhibition of Surrealism. Mannequin by Kurt Seligmann. Galerie des Beaux-Arts of Georges Wildenstein, 140 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Paris (8th district), January 1938.
available
Wax mannequin. Dupuytren Museum, rue de l'Ecole-de-Médecine. Paris (VIth district), around 1930.
available
Communicant. France, around 1950.
available
"The Mage of Berlin". Man with a pipe holding a human skull. Berlin, 1945-1946.
available
International Exhibition of Surrealism. Mannequin by Maurice Henry. Galerie des Beaux-Arts of Georges Wildenstein, 140 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. Paris (8th district), January 1938.
available
Fairground attraction, Striptease "The Robot". "Man you will be defeated by your own robot" is written at the entrance of the attraction. France, around 1936.
available
"Nightmare", composition. France, around 1953.
available
"Murder Scene", composition. France, 1950's.
available
"Murder Scene", composition. France, 1950's.
available
"Murder Scene", composition. France, 1950's.
available
"La clef des songes" (The key to the dreams), composition. France, 1950's.
available
Reconstruction of a murder scene. France, 1950's.
available
Edith Georges (1931-1981), french actress, dancer and singer. France, around 1950.
available
Young man. France, 1950's.
available
Circus artist. France, around 1935.
available
Women in a fairground. France, around 1935.
available
Henri Salvador (1917-2008), French singer-songwriter. France, around 1950.
available
Brigitte Bardot (born 1934), French actress. France, around 1954-1955.
available
Kiki de Montparnasse (1901-1953), French singer, actress, model and painter. Paris, 1934.
available
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American naturalized French music-hall performer in Jacques Offenbach's (1819-1880) operetta "La Créole" at the Théâtre Marigny. Paris (8th district), December 1934.
available
Line Renaud (born 1928), French singer and actress, at La Jonchère. Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), around 1955.
available
Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977), French director. Paris, around 1954.
available
Sculpted head of Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German physicist and theorist naturalized American. Musée Grévin. Paris (9th district), around 1935.
available
André Dignimont (1891-1965), French painter, at home. Paris, around 1940.
available
Edith Piaf (1915-1963), French singer. France, around 1937.
available
Wax bust of Greta Garbo (1905-1990), Swedish actress. Musée Grévin. Paris (9th district), around 1935.
available
Benedictine monk in a corridor of the abbey, Saint-Wandrille (Seine-Maritime), around 1935.
available
Charles Dullin (1885-1949) in Volpone by Jules Romains, after Ben Jonson. Paris, Théâtre de l'Atelier, September 1937.
available
Noël-Noël (1897-1989), French actor and director. Paris, théâtre de l'A.B.C., around 1950.
available
The clown Joe Jackson at the circus Médrano. Paris, 1934.
available
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American music-hall artist naturalized French. Paris, around 1935.
available
Review show of the Folies-Bergère. Paris (9th district), 1935.
available
Weaving workshop of the Gobelins factory. Paris, around 1935.
available
Gaston Paris photographing a mirror ball above a carousel. France, around 1937.
available
Anne Doat (born 1936), French actress, and Gaston Paris in a mirror, next to the Luxor obelisk. Paris (8th district), place de la Concorde, around 1954.
available
Mirror effect on a sphere. Self-portrait of Gaston Paris. France, around 1935.
availableAs the only salaried photographer of the magazine VU, he closely contributed with the magazine Art et Médecine. He was also a member of Rectangle, an association of French illustrative and advertising photographers, alongside Emmanuel Sougez or Pierre Jahan... His work pictured numerous illustrated magazines that were very fashionable at the time. After his death in 1964, the Roger-Viollet photo agency bought his collection (around 15,000 negatives). Nowadays, his photographs are housed by the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris and distributed in exclusivity by Roger-Viollet. This exhibition echoes and completes the one organized jointly at the Centre Pompidou under the title "Gaston Paris. La photographie en spectacle".
Children of the suburbs in Paris. France, 1936.
available
Children of the suburbs in Paris. France, 1936.
available
Poor children in a Parisian suburb. Circa 1936.
available
Boys in the ruins of Berlin-East, after 1945.
available
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Exodus of Republicans in France, January 1939.
available
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Exodus of Republicans in France, January 1939.
available
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Arrival of civilian refugees in France, January 1939.
available
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Exodus. France, January 1939.
available
Gaston Paris photographer in the army, in uniform. 1945.
available
Royflex advertising. Around 1955.
available