The rediscovery in the early 1970s of French "primitive photography" as highly desirable art led many museum curators and private collectors to a small glass-walled treasure trove buried in the Paris flea market at Porte de Clignancourt. This modest establishment-bookstalls outside, photographica, posters, and popular-art memorabilia crowding the interior-was designed around a deliberate strategy: Novice collectors were re9ujred to hurd.le scholarly and financial measures of seriousness before being allowed access to a tiny second-tloor room where one could find a select group of premium images by Le Gray, Baldus, Nègre, and others.
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