The Galerie Roger-Viollet presents the exhibition “Un Abécédaire Littéraire Parisien, d’Aragon à Zola” where literature and photography invite lovers of the capital to take a stroll through the Paris of writers.
From Aragon to Zola, this literary Abecedarium travels through the districts of the capital which sheltered the daily lives of writers or nourished their imagination.
From the cafés haunted by Paul Verlaine to the Halles in the belly of Paris by Émile Zola, without forgetting the dark streets that pursue Modiano or the Île de la Cité with Aurélien by Louis Aragon… so many invitations to (re)readings and to wanderings in their footsteps, in the heart of their familiar places.
As academician Antoine Compagnon writes in the preface to the eponymous book which accompanies the exhibition: “To cross Paris is to wander through literature: “Andromache, I’m thinking of you!” » As in “The Swan”, the poem from Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, everything becomes an allegory. The French are born provincial, almost all of them. Formerly, they were farmers. But all end in Paris.
If they write, Paris is their second little homeland, and that of foreigners conquered by the “capital of the 19th century”, as Walter Benjamin called it, that is to say the capital of writer’s pictures since Balzac – who feared that each cliché would remove some of his skin, Hugo, Baudelaire. »
Bargain hunters at the second-hand booksellers on Quai Conti, horse-drawn carriages at the Bon Marché overflowing with goods, curious people scrutinizing a tightrope walker in Montmartre, a soup seller in Les Halles, an estaminet with absinthe drinkers, Parisians at the Ritz at tea time…
Eugène Atget, Charles Marville, Pierre Jahan, Janine Niepce, Gaston Paris, Hélène Roger-Viollet, to name but a few, are not left out to show the Paris of the 19th and 20th centuries in images.
But we must also count on the unique portraits of Henri Martinie and the Lipnitzki’s proximity to artists and writers to explore this alphabet book where extracts from texts by great authors make the link between literature and photography.
The majority of photographs are kept at the Historical Library of the City of Paris. (BHVP) and distributed exclusively by the Galerie Roger-Viollet.
This exhibition presents 80 numbered contemporary prints, in limited edition.
Un Abécédaire Littéraire Parisien, d’Aragon à Zola
Until February 1st, 2025
Galerie Roger-Viollet
6, rue de Seine
75006 Paris
www.galerie-roger-viollet.fr
The book Un Abécédaire Littéraire Parisien is published by Gallimard, collection Hors-série littérature.
Preface by Antoine Compagnon of the French Academy Texts by Jean-Noël Mouret
Format: 190 x 240 mm Number of pages: 120
Number of illustrations: 90 photos from the Roger-Viollet collection
Price: €26
https://www.gallimard.fr/catalogue/un-abecedaire-litteraire-parisien-d-aragon-a-zola/9782073063052
