Born in Paris in 1902, Denise Bellon (née Hulmann) grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. During her adolescence, her encounter with the Maklès sisters opened up new horizons of freedom for her, and her meeting with André Breton in the 1920s introduced her to the Surrealist movement, to which she remained attached throughout her life. Involved in various artistic and political movements, she socialized with artists, writers, and filmmakers and began her foray into photography when her partner, Olivier Béchet, gave her a Rolleiflex camera and introduced her to the photographers at Studio Zuber, with whom she would later found Alliance Photo, the first photographic cooperative.
“She had a taste for adventure, the unexpected, and challenges. Bold in her actions, she would have loved to be an explorer,” says her daughter, filmmaker Yannick Bellon. These qualities led Denise Bellon to undertake photojournalism assignments in the Balkans (1934), Morocco (1936), French West Africa (1939), and Finland (1939). Until 1940, her photographs were widely published in prestigious magazines and journals of the time, such as Photographie 1938, Arts et métiers graphiques, Regards, and Paris Match, which published her portraits of the Roma people of the Zone during a wedding celebration in 1939. Her path crossed that of Jacques Prévert, Marcel Duchamp, Moïse Kisling, Salvador Dalí, André Masson, Jean Giono, and others. Forced to take refuge in Lyon during the war, she continued her work clandestinely, capturing the oppressive atmosphere of the city under the Occupation, while her husband, Armand Labin, was actively involved in the Resistance. After the Liberation, she undertook several photojournalistic projects, such as the one documenting the Jewish Scouts’ center in Moissac (1945) and the Jewish community of Djerba (1947). She also photographed figures in the film industry (Serge Reggiani, Paul Grimault, Marcel Marceau, Nico Papatakis…) and, as part of a reportage on the Cinémathèque Française in 1947, took the famous photograph of Henri Langlois in his bathtub. Her lens captured various events related to the Surrealist movement, including the International Surrealist Exhibition of 1938, as well as those of 1947, 1959, and 1965. In 1953, she documented a trip to Francoist Spain with Henry Miller, an experience that would later inspire a joint book project between the two artists: Mejores no hay! (There are none better!). From 1956 onwards, she settled permanently in Paris, documenting the film sets of her daughter Yannick Bellon’s films while continuing her own personal photographic work. This book pays tribute to this committed woman who explored the diversity of photography without adhering to any particular aesthetic school. The fourteen contributions by various authors shed light on Denise Bellon’s life and work, exploring different periods of her life and the context in which her photographs were created, which are faithfully reproduced in this beautifully crafted book.
Denise Bellon : Un regard vagabond
Delpire & co
Format: 20.2 x 26 cm Hardcover
240 pages 193 images
Price: €42
ISBN: 979-10-95821-84-7
Book in French
Edited by Éric Le Roy and Nicolas Feuillie
http://www.delpireandco.com
