France Demay, a skilled precision industries worker, lived with his family in Pré Saint-Gervais in the outskirts of Paris. His two great passions, photography and sports, traversed the prewar era marked by profound social transformation. In the 1930s, there were few pioneering photographers among the middle and working classes.
The France Demay collection takes us to the eve of World War II, just as the 1936 Olympic Games were being organized in Berlin. It also sheds original light on working-class Paris which was just discovering and defending new social values among them paid holidays.
Since April 9, the Musée de l’histoire vivante in Montreuil has been exhibiting over twenty photographs from the collection in order to offer the public simultaneous reinterpretations of this particular moment in history as it is inscribed in the French collective memory. The history of the French Popular Front unfolds through photographs that capture movements of bodies as much as political and social upheavals. The exhibition includes known photographs by Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Seymour, as well as photos by Marcel Cerf, France Demay, and Pierre Jamet, some of which are shown to the general public for the first time.
Another exhibition, 1936: The Popular Front in Photographs, can be viewed at the Mairie de Paris until July 23. Aged between 20 and 30 and armed with their cameras, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chim, Robert Doisneau, as well as Willy Ronis, all still young and little known, capture 1930s’ Paris to illustrate journals and magazines.
In 1936, with the Popular Front and an unprecedented wave of strikes sweeping through France, this young generation was coming into its own. They circulated around the capital to capture these historical moments, taking advantage of the growing demand of the booming magazine publishing industry. There are over 400 works on display in the Saint-Jean exhibition hall at the Hôtel de Ville.
EXHIBITIONS
• 1936 : Nouvelles images, Nouveaux Regards
Collection France Demay
Curators : Eric Lafon, Frédéric Cépède and Jean Vigreux
From April 9th to December 31st, 2016
Musée de l’histoire vivante
31, Bd Théophile Sueur
93100 Montreuil
France
http://www.museehistoirevivante.fr
• 1936 : Front Populaire en Photographie
Collection France Demay
Curator : Françoise Denoyelle
From May 19th to July 23rd 2016
Salle Saint-Jean
Hôtel de ville
5, rue Lobau
75004 Paris
France
http://www.paris.fr
BOOK
Un Parfum de bonheur
Didier Daeninckx
Photographies of France Demay
Editions Gallimard
128 pages, 134 ill., sous couverture illustrée, 185 x 235 mm, cartonné
ISBN : 9782070179565
http://www.gallimard.fr
