Laure Albin Guillot

Following shows on Lee Miller, Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott and Eva Besnyö, the Jeu de Paume continues its cycle of female artists with a new exhibition celebrating a great French 20th century female photographer.

Laure Albin Guillot, star of the darkroom during the 1930s and 1940s and the post-war period, was almost forgotten during the decades that followed, doubtless due to the modern enthusiasm for surrealism and the avant-garde (Dora Maar, Meret Oppenheim and Hannah Höch). Laure Albin Guillot’s success was built on great blocks of classicism, and cemented by exploiting the most lucrative means of diffusion available to her at the time: advertising, press and illustration. At the Jeu de Paume, some 200 sadly neglected works return the French photographer to her rightful place in the sun, revealing her approach to the bourgeois portrait, the nude and the billboard as well as her more experimental works, especially evident in her ‘decorative microphotography’, sort of abstract tableaux created from microscopic pieces.