(France 1879–1962)
45.4 x 27.3cm image; 45.9 x 27.5cm sheet
Laure Albin-Guillot is described by Christian Bouqueret as a ‘figure of transition between pictorialism and New Vision’.1 As one of the pioneering female photographers who worked both in the commercial and artistic modes of production, Albin-Guillot’s early work is marked by the modernist aesthetic and an experimental streak. But it was her portraits of French intelligentsia – widely reproduced in journals such as ‘Life’, ‘Vu’, ‘Arts et métiers graphiques’ - that consolidated Albin-Guillot’s reputation as a photographer. ‘Algiers’ c1936 displays the move from her purely formalist concerns to a more documentary vision that remains, nevertheless, poetically inclined.
1. C Bouqueret, ‘Laure Albin -Guillot ou la volonté d'art’, Paris, Marval, 1996, p 8