Fantasies of the street: Emigré photography in interwar Paris

Abstract

A vibrant centre of cultural and artistic production, interwar Paris attracted many photographers from central Europe. Bringing with them inherited traditions and visual lexicons from their countries of origin, this heterogeneous group of photographers, which included Ilse Bing, André Kertész and Germaine Krull, put their acquired skills and habits to use in new contexts, drawing inspiration from each other, from their engagement with the vibrant culture of France, and most of all from a widespread fascination with Paris as photographic topos. Responding to nostalgia for images of a ‘popular Paris’ in the illustrated press, these photographers accomplished an alchemical transformation of Paris into a city in which past and present were poignantly reconciled. At the same time, many of their photographs, shot through with themes of exile and homelessness, reveal the fragility of the myth of a ‘popular Paris’, particularly after the advent of economic and social crises in the 1930s.