To this day, unfortunately, no biographical information about Marcel Louchet, which would allow us to paint a portrait of him, has ever reached us. However, the several hundred prints recently discovered reveal the coherent and accomplished work of a photographer unknown until now.
The majority of the rediscovered photographs date from just after the war to the beginning of the 1950s and take as their main subjects, Paris and its inhabitants. Street scenes, the urban landscape and nocturnal views make up the heart of his iconographic repertoire. The aesthetic of his images places him firmly in the humanist current that dominated this period where nostalgia and optimism for a changing world mingled.
Like his famous counterparts of the period (Boubat, Doisneau, Izis, Ronis…), Marcel Louchet tried to create a portrait of the daily life of Parisians with his picturesque figures, his joyful or anecdotal scenes. In Louchet’s eyes, these daily moments are transformed into theatrical scenes in which the commonplace sometimes takes on a poetic appearance.
Let’s hope that this first exhibition devoted to Marcel Louchet will allow us to learn more about this work and about this man whose outline is still mysterious.
Marcel Louchet, Paris des années 1950
From 2nd to 19th March 2017
Galerie Graphem
68 Rue de Charenton
75012 Paris
France
http://www.galerie-graphem.com/
