For the first time, a French photography studio is creating a link connecting woman to francophonie (french speaking communities) in an exhibition for the Chinese public of Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, with openings taking place on International Women’s Day.
Let us remember that Harcourt is the only classic photo studio still active around the world. In fact, in its eighty-four years, cofounded in 1934 by a photography lab technician Cosette Harcourt, it has been through all the vicissitudes of the 20th century, from deaths to technological upheavals. Who today still takes the trouble to go to a photo studio “to have their portrait taken” in this selfie-saturated society?
In 2017, during the exhibition in Paris Ou sont les femmes ? [Where are the women?], which paid tribute to women who left a legacy, Studio Harcourt honored its founder Cosette, who started her career by working in the darkroom, developing and printing film photographs.
In 1934, during a time when women had neither the right to vote nor financial autonomy, and when they were forbidden to practice many careers, it must have taken enormous courage for Cosette Harcourt to get involved in a photo studio, especially during a time when all the major renowned studios like Nadar had been closing their doors one by one. The brilliant Cosette relied on cinema figures. These celebrities, thanks to their popularity, made it possible to sell pictures to newspapers and magazines and became the perfect link to distribute mass-produced portraits of stars.
The mythic status of Harcourt could not be without cinema, since so many actors and actrices posed in front of her lens. Thanks is also due to Henri Alekan, the head cameraman of Jean Cocteau, who broke ground with his chiaroscuro lighting to accentuate the dramatic dimension of the Beauty and the Beast. This 1946 film inspired Cosette Harcourt to make this “blurred and sharpened” aura a signature, along with the actor’s pose, which was going to become a real “house” culture for the successive teams of Harcourt’s photographers. It is why Roland Barthes said: “In France, you’re not an actor if you’re not photographed by Studio Harcourt. The Harcourt actor is a god. He never does anything. He is captured at rest.”
In the same way that a Harcourt photographer wonders how to compose a portrait characteristic of a writer, an athlete, a ballerina, or a musician, it is also necessary to wonder what physiologically characterizes a francophone? In 2017 with 275 million speakers, French was classified as the sixth most-spoken language in the world after English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, and Hindi. Yet each spoken language mobilizes the muscular mechanisms of the mouth, the tongue, and the glottis, and affects how one holds their head. Does the practice of a particular language modify the physiognomy of the face? The game consists in examining the faces of the Harcourt portraits like a detective trying to detect any evidence. Among francophones, there may even be accent influences: Belgian, Swiss, Canadian, African, Arab. The Parisian urchin or the Ch’ti do not sound the same as a Southern accent or an Alsatian accent, etc.
In this exhibition, we have the chance to see a rich diversity, from the portrait of Leila Slimani, a writer born in Morocco, to the portrait of Cécilia Rhode, a Swedish sculptor and the mother of Joakim Noah. All these faces are perfect representations of the Women of Francophonie. Beyond their fascinating biographies, all have a particular uniqueness that we can scrutinize and study, and it is the light from Studio Harcourt that will illuminate us and provide us with new paths to inspection and reflection.
Jean Loh
Jean Loh is an editor specialized in photography. He lives and works in Shanghai, China.
Les femmes en francophonie
From March 8 through May 8, 2018
Guangzhou Museum of Contemporary Art
273 Huajiu Road, Zhujiang new town, Tianhe District
Canton, China
