Our collaborator Zoé Isle de Beauchaine is the curator of the exhibition Années 1930 et modernité : l’âge d’or des revues médicales which highlights the link between the pharmaceutical world and photographic modernity through three publications: Art et Médecine, Mieux Vivre and Diversion.
Before the arrival of television and then of social networks, images between the wars circulated mainly in the press and illustrated publications. Periodicals like Vu were the symbol of this new use, the golden age of printed images and (typo)graphic games. Lesser known detail: the pharmaceutical industry also took part in this revolution.
Three French magazines, Art et Médecine, Mieux Vivre and Diversion, financed and published by laboratories were distributed to the medical profession during this period. Their goal? promotion of their products. Their particularity? Medicine or medications are barely mentioned. These magazines gave pride of place to literature as well as to the big names in photography: Man Ray, Brassaï, Laure Albin-Guillot, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, François Kollar, etc. Several of these “advertorials” went to the point of limiting medical content to advertising pages only, to favor literary, artistic, humorous and tourist subjects, whose readers were practitioners.
Art et Médecine, Mieux Vivre and Diversion stood out for the notoriety of their contributors as much as for the elegance of their layouts. Modern layout, richness of illustrations, printing quality, these magazines competed in creativity to attract the attention of doctors. Each had its specialty: Art and Medicine, devoted each issue to a French region, Diversion to a country and Mieux Vivre to a leisure activity: skiing, flowers, bathing, music… The latter prided itself on bringing together “the most beautiful photographic documents chosen from the best […] with the sole concern of their appeal, due to their beauty, their originality, their light, their contrasts, the power of the recorded movement.”
The photos extended over a full page, or responded to each other in a sophisticated layout, particularly for Diversion where graphics were king: for each issue, a new typography was created to fit the theme, sometimes merging image and text . This creativity continued throughout the pages in which the collage mixed with the calligram while the drawing extended the photography.
Another field of experimentation: advertising. Advertising photography, which flourished, was then produced by numerous specialized studios. Pharmaceutical periodicals gave an overview of the refinement of each advertisement which harmoniously followed the publication and sometimes played the humor card, like Mieux Vivre which created a facetious dialogue between its advertisements and the theme of each issue.
If these magazines highlighted the unexpected role of the pharmaceutical industry as distributor of photographic modernity, their visual creativity was a source of inspiration that still resonates in a very contemporary way.
Zoé Isle de Beauchaine
Exhibition curator
Années 1930 et modernité : l’âge d’or des revues médicales
Salons du Doyen de la Faculté de pharmacie de Paris
PhotoSaintGermain
This text can be found in the SIMONE journal published by the PhotoSaintGermain festival.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to generous loans from the Nicéphore Niépce museum and the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie
