From male and female nudes, to emerging advertising photography, through photomicrography, still life, fashion or portraits, Laure Albin Guillot (1879-1962) actively participated in the New Photography of the interwar period.
By the end of the 1920’s, with her husband, a scientist, she brought out the beauty of the invisible to the eye by imagining her microphotographs on autochromes. After the death of her husband, to support herself, she set up her studio on the Boulevard Beauséjour, in the very chic 16th arrondissement of Paris. A renowned social photographer, thanks to her interpersonal skills she portrayed personalities from the world of arts and culture, as well as anonymous members of the Parisian bourgeoisie. The success of Laure Albin Guillot is also due to a very specific style, the way she diffuses light, enveloping faces and bodies or just a detail of the anatomy, thus sublimating the personality of the photographed subjects.
She was also a pioneer in nude photography, always in search of a perfect aesthetic. Her studies of the female and male body are carefully cropped with pencil directly onto a reading print before a final proof is made.
During the 1930's, advertising photography took an important place in magazines. Laure Albin Guillot treated commissions from the luxury goods, fashion, cosmetics and tobacco industries with the same rigorous framing and lighting, sometimes even intervening in the message to be conveyed.
Author of numerous books and exhibitions, member of the SFP (Société Française de Photographie), the SAP (Société des Artistes Photographes), director of the Beaux-Arts photographic archives, Laure Albin Guillot died in 1962 leaving behind an immense, eclectic and coherent body of work. Most of it was acquired by the Roger-Viollet agency in 1964. Her studio collection is preserved by the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP) and is exclusively distributed by the Roger-Viollet Gallery.
Around sixty contemporary prints will be proposed during the exhibition « Laure Albin Guillot, L'élégance du regard », at the Roger-Viollet Gallery.
This photography agency, created in 1938, is one of the oldest French agencies. Its collections constitute a unique photographic collection in Europe with over 6 million documents covering more than 180 years of Parisian, French and international history.
This unique place dedicated to archive photography has managed to preserve its soul and has offered, since the end of 2020, a new exhibition space, a space for consulting and selling prints, and a bookshop.