From 1924 to 1962, Théodore Blanc and Antoine Demilly had one of the most prominent photographic studios in Lyon. Well-known portraitists, they devoted their lives to photography, dividing their time between a traditional commercial activity, and a creative, inventive and prolific practice.
For almost forty years now, Antoine Demilly’s daughter has been gathering up all of her father’s work and that of his associate, all scattered to the four winds, thrown out the day after the studio ceased its activity in 1962. It was not yet a time of preservation; French institutions were not interested in photography, still less in the form what was assumed to be a local production. The task turned out to be enormous Blanc and Demilly were prolific. Thousands of portraits came out of their studio frequented by the Lyon bourgeoisie and the avant-garde artists . The two photographers’ personal work was also very large.
The variety of subjects, whose captions are often lost, is evidence of the eclectic tastes of the two partners who, having sometimes worked separately, almost always refused to see their names separated. The exhibition presents part of these archives . The original prints, altered by time and neglect, are difficult to date. The 1930s are mixed with the 1950s united in the same search for iconographic poetry. Lovers of beautiful images and aware of progress, Blanc and Demilly vary their manner, moving from pictorialist emphasis to New Vision. Their use of Rolleiflex and Leica, if manageable, conferred on them an unequalled freedom of movement. They roamed the streets of Lyon, the banks of the Saône, the mountains and the countryside around them , so passionate they didn’t hesitate to bring groups of enthusiastic amateur photographers.
The studio’s activity is mainly turned to portraiture which they modernised by simplifying the setting, their curiosity and their taste for experimentation pushed them to work on all subjects from the most poetic to the most formal. Blanc and Demilly laid claim to a multiplicity of looks, all driven by emotion. To capture life at its most picturesque, at its most unexpected, the subject could be a mere nothing, a shadow whose clean and simple lines are conveyed by a simple composition, almost abstract, which gives it beauty with the aim of taking it from the commonplace to the metaphoric. They bring to light latent objects, shapes in the strange faint light and the steamy mist of the early morning at dawn. These “atmospheric” representations are filters. Their function is to lead us past harsh reality to access a visual poetry, and loose oneself in the image space.
These photographs are sometimes disconcerting. Blanc and Demilly collected these places from a “new world”, the history of which doesn’t have to be known. What is concealed here, silently is one of those things that only express themselves on a walk or in solitude.
But this apparent eclecticism is not dispersion. Each image confirms that by going beyond the simple vision, you can see that it has mystery and beauty . For Blanc and Demilly, what is accessible to the senses gives life to a certain truth. The photographs record and transmit vibrations, the indeterminate moments of the world’s sensuality. They are reflections. From image to image, you come across to something new. The photographic wandering, between objects, portraits and landscapes is only a roaming and disruptive way of looking. Photographic modernity offers the possibility of more than one point of view, that is to say experiences of a “new world”, an exploration of what is near, that is also knowledge of ourselves.
Céline Duval
Céline Duval is an exhibition curator and director of Stimultania, the photographic hub in Strasbourg in France.
Exhibition :
Blanc & Demilly
Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau
1, rue de la Division du Général Leclerc
94250 Gentilly
France
www.maisondoisneau.agglo-valdebievre.fr
Book :
Blanc & Demilly, Le nouveau monde
Texts by François Cheval, Céline Duval and Xavier Fricaudet
Published by Lieux Dits
27 €
https://www.lieuxdits.fr/
