A famous photograph of Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo strolling the Champs-Elysées is not, contrary to what one might think, an image of the film. It is a pure staging by photographer Raymond Cauchelier to whom we owe this common sense reflection: “what is good for the cinema, is not always so for the photo …”. Photography thought like the twenty-fifth image, the one we remember!
In 1936, with the victory of the Popular Front, we witness the height of poetic realism. It is a cinema shot in the studio where decorators such as Alexandre Trauner play an important role. If the dialogists, too, become key characters in French cinema (the most famous being Jacques Prévert), the cinematographers mark their era with their talent and ingenuity. Henri Alekan, one of the most famous of them, inspired Colette Harcourt to create studios of the same name.
It was at this time that Gaston Paris began to frequent filming and to portray the stars of the time with whom he often maintained a real closeness. Armed with his Rolleiflex, he knew how to best use the lighting of the cinematographer for his very sophisticated images, which often include the “Harcourt” spirit. Gaston Paris, like Alain Adler later, will work during the idle time of filming. The decor is in place but the actors “off” and somehow become a little themselves, having given up, for a break, their film character. So goes the photograph of Antony Queen with makeup on the set of Notre-Dame de Paris (by Jean Delannoy in 1956). The actor emanates a feeling of fatigue which tells us how difficult the role is. Alain Adler plays perfectly with the intimacy of the off-camera and establishes a special relationship with the actor for this unique photograph which deconstructs the traditional image of the American actor.
On the eve of the New Wave, French cinema takes pleasure in an outdated academicism. Fortunately the honor of the seventh art is saved by great independent authors like Renoir, Bresson, Ophüls or Tati. A majority of French production is however dedicated to minor films with evocative titles (“Be beautiful and shut up”, “Along the sidewalks”, “Miss disaster” …) which say a lot about the place of women in society , and which will inspire Alain Adler a lot with images often without concessions. Like this image of the young Bardot kneeling on the carpet in an evening dress with a technician at work and in the background a couple whose gaze of the man seems to be magnetized by the buttocks of the actress.
Gaston Paris – Born in 1903, Gaston Paris was one of the pillars of the weekly Vu in the 1930s, founded in 1928 by Lucien Vogel. The only employee among the photographers, he shares the pages of the magazine with Laure Albin-Guillot, Germaine Krull, André Kertész … He multiplies reports: cinema, sport, song, theater, the construction site of the new Trocadéro … etc. Alongside this classic production of a photographer reporter of the time, he delivers many strange and personal short reports, with surreal inspirations. He excelled in bizarre staging and became one of the regular contributors to Detective magazine from the late 1930s to the 1950s; between horror and Grand Guignol he recreates dramas populated by gangsters and adulterers … He died in Paris in 1964. Redeemed by Roger-Viollet shortly after the photographer’s disappearance, the 15,000 photographs by Gaston Paris allow us to follow the evolution of his gaze, to grasp his familiarity with his models, Simenon, Cocteau, Jouvet or Piaf, and to discover the charms of swimsuit competitions at the Molitor swimming pool, those behind the scenes of the Folies Bergère or the workshops of Yves Brayer and Moses Kisling.
Alain Adler – From 1954 to 1964, photographer Alain Adler roamed the stages of French cinema. The decade is rich in productions, from the beginnings of the New Wave with “À bout de souffle” by Jean-Luc Godard or “Tirez sur le pianiste” by Claude Chabrol, to the longevity of the “French quality” of Claude Autant’s films -Lara or Jean Delannoy, against whom she was built. The actors are not to be outdone: Delon, Belmondo, Gabin, Regianni, Micheline Presle, Micheline Morgan or Annie Girardot, the emblematic actors of the moment parade before the lens of the photographer who captures them in action or at rest. The Roger-Viollet agency, which acquired the photographer’s funds in 1990, digitized more than 12,000 negatives.
The photographs of Alain Adler and Gaston Paris are part of the “Roger-Viollet Fund” which belongs to the Historical Library of the City of Paris, and by public service concession are disseminated by the Roger-Viollet Agency.
The CéTàVOIR association has been organizing the imageSingulières festival since 2009. This year, due to the epidemic of Covid-19, we had to cancel the holding of the twelfth edition of the meeting of documentary photography in Sète was canceled. In order not to remain on this great frustration – and for the public and for the invited photographers – CéTàVOIR decided to compose the cultural season of the House of Documentary Image, their place in the year, with exhibitions planned for the festival. Two exhibitions could also be reported in partner places.
Alain Adler & Gaston Paris / Agence Roger-Viollet, Hors-Champ
Exhibition from July 10 to November 29, 2020 at The Rio, Sète
The RIO
7 Quai Léopold Suquet, Sète
Free admission
Every day from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Exhibition from mid-July 2020 to end-April 2021 at Sète station
In Sète SNCF station
78 Place André Cambon, Sète
Free admission
Station opening times
