History of Photography

Summary:

Philippe Jacquier and his wife Marion specialize in Photographs from the 19th and early 20th century, mostly from anonymous, amateur photographers. The great grandson of Gabriel Veyre, one of the pioneers of Autochrome photography, Jacquier credits his great grandfather for his initial interest in vintage photography. He also describes himself as a purveyor and not a collector as he and his wife sell images, with a price tag averaging between EURO 500-2000.

Jacquier describes his methods for searching for and selecting the perfect vintage image, most importantly the image must have a special “aura”, magical photo of beautiful movement and composition. One example that is shown during the film is a momentous photo of a horse and his trainer taken sometime in the 1870’s, this photo clearly fills all the criteria Jacquier and his wife find important when selecting images. They find most of their images from private family photo albums, not necessarily on the open market. Their search begins sometimes in the early dark hours, sometimes starting at 5 a.m.

Once a year Jacquier and his wife showcase their discoveries at the Paris photo Fair. For Jacquiers’ it was a simple transition: they decided to share their personal tastes in vintage photography paving the way to follow their exciting passion and have fun while making money at the same time, providing collectors with truly unique photos that are definitely one of a kind.

Summary:

In this film, photo-curator Graham Howe tells FotoTV a wonderfully interesting story about renowned photographer E.O. Hoppé, and how by chance Howe discovered the stored archives of Hoppé's brilliant work. Howe's story begins in London in 1972, where he met photo-historian Bill Jay. Jay had recently completed and oral history project on E.O. Hoppé, and names Hoppé “The most famous photographer in the world, in 1920.” Howe was surprised, because as an art student, he knew photographers such as, Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand to be the famous photographers of the 1920s. Although ignited with curiosity, Howe would not learn more about Hoppé until a chance meeting twenty years later with Michael Hoppé, E.O. Hoppé’s grandson. That meeting provided him with further contacts, which led him to a London stock agency, where a large amount of Hoppé’s photographic work was archived. Amongst the exquisite work, Howe found an incredibly rare photograph of 42nd St. in New York City, dated 1921 and signed by E.O. Hoppé. It was on this day of discovery that Howe realized, it was the American photographers who were noted as being the best modernists of that era, but actually there was also Hoppé, a European who was just as good if not better than the master photographers the world up until this point knew of. Howe spent another ten years, locating and researching the archives of E.O. Hoppé, a total of about 100,000 images. An incredible amount of time was spent organizing, cataloging, and reassembling the images. It was now clear to Howe why Hoppé went unaccredited as one of the most important modernists of the blue chip era of photography for so long, because Hoppé sold his entire archive to a stock agency in 1952. The agency did not syndicate his work, thus making his work unavailable and largely unknown on the market for many years, including the years where his contemporaries received accolades for their work of the 1920s. Howe is currently working on a collection of 12 photo-books, with themes of portraiture, landscape, and dance, of Hoppé’s work. In addition, upcoming Hoppé exhibitions are, “The German Work: 1925-1938”, at the Berlinische Gallerie in Berlin, Germany, November 2010, and “The English: 1912-1950”, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, in March 2011

Summary:

In this film Ariana Stahmer, great-granddaughter to Edward Steichen, and co-curator Todd Brandow, meet with FotoTV to discuss the Steichen retrospective exhibit in Paris. For the first time, many of the iconic photos of this exciting retrospective are being shown for the first time in Europe, and Stahmer and Brandow share anecdotes of the Steichen family history, as well as a celebrated history of Steichen’s work.

Steichen was an iconic photographer, one of the most influential and prolific photographers of the twentieth century. His early awareness of the impressionists was reflected through his ultra expressionistic works and his unusual and creative style, which was atypical of that era. But Steichen continued to experiment with new photographic techniques and 1914 marked the end of a certain style of photography for him.

Co-curator Brandow explains that beginning in 1915, Steichen successfully made the shift from pictorialism to modernism, his photos underwent a dramatic change, notably, marked by their luminous detail and their very life-like depiction. The photographic work he had experienced during the war infused him with a new passion for sharp-focused pictures and he developed a keener interest in the new technical advances in photography. His first fashion photographs were original and different and soon he began working out of a commercial studio in New York, specializing in advertising photography. He became a chief photographer for Condé Nast, thereafter producing atmospheric and legendary still lifes and editorial fashion stories for Vogue and Vanity Fair.

Of the many exhibitions Steichen created, the largest and most famous was "The Family of Man", an exhibition of over 500 photographs that depicted life, love and death. Stahmer explains that this particular exhibit is a brilliant legacy handed down by her great-grandfather, teeming with his humanist vision, and carrying the message of hope for mankind.

Summary:

In this film we learn about the dedicated people involved with the historical Roger-Viollet Photographic Agency. Archiving and distributing some of the most memorable and outstanding work of all times, Roger-Viollet became part of the city of Paris’s, “Parisienne de Photographie”, a photographic heritage preservation and development company, in 2005.

Photographer Henri Roger took his first photograph at the age of eleven and by twenty he was an engineer and a pioneer of trick photography. The “trickster” began with variations on the self-portrait: Henri Roger made his first on 7th May 1892, calling it “Man and His Double”, and inventing the term “Bilocation” for images using the same model twice. His technique was nothing more complicated than negatives retouched, masked and printed together.

During the 1890s Roger photographed his entire family for such novelty scenes of middle-class life as in “Family” (1894), “Elegant Ladies in the Luxembourg Gardens” (1895) and “Married Life” (c. 1895).

From 1901 onwards the arrival of his children provided him with a store of participating models, and the family events became photographic ones as well. Each image catches some everyday moment in a way that makes it appealing or unlikely, and it was quite common for the six children to become twelve thanks to the magic of fakery. Henri Roger was the inventor of the “19th-century photo blog”, in which he juggles with pictorial conventions.

A vital catalyst in the creation of Roger-Viollet, Roger initiated his eldest daughter Hélène into the “mysteries of photography” and she remained bitten by the bug. On October 14, 1938, Hélène Roger and her fiancé, Jean-Victor Fischer, took over the photo shop of Laurent Olivier, located at 6 rue de Seine and founded “Documentation Photographique Générale Roger-Viollet”, today internationally known as the Roger-Viollet Photographic Agency, one of the oldest photography agencies in France.

After WWII, Roger-Viollet bought up numerous collections constituting one of the biggest photo banks in Europe by 1960. These collections span more than a century and a half of world history: major events, craftsmen, Beaux Arts, science and politics, the streets of Paris and exotic travels, and of course, famous portraits and candid moments.

This photo heritage – more than 6 million works and documents, which today belong to the city of Paris – also follows the development of photography via the works of photo studios during the Second Empire up to the era of photo reporters capturing the wars of the 20th century.