Cité de la Mode et du Design presents more than a hundred photos, including some unseen, from great German photographer Erwin Blumenfeld. The softness of women’s bodies, boldly painted lips and nails, transparent veils shielding the faces of several femmes fatales or silver screen sirens. From Hitchcock to Wenders, here you can step into the magical world that Blumenfeld conveys in his photos.
Women, skirts, and veils: experimental fashion
The beginning of the 1930s marked when Blumfeld decided to dedicate himself entirely to professional fashion photography after having left the Dada movement. Dadaism allows play with reality, the audacious tone of experience and inventive curiosity, which gives fashion photography an experimental beauty that is daring and intriguing. The superimpressions reinforce women from immobile mannequins to alluring Hydra of Lerna, where the discontinuity of light creates an image of woman’s body that only Cubists could have imagined. Blumenfeld envisages photography as a screen which interposes in between us and reality.
A feather-soft revolution
With around 170 photos, the exhibition retraces the desire for permanent exploration that animates photography. The first photos or the inspiration of Man Ray was distinctly felt by the experimental colour pioneers, as his work is imprinted with more of a rich variety than a strong sense of coherency. The works are powerfully bold, photography’s crème de la crème.
Busts, Greek statues, Italian widows, mythological creatures, tombstones… These black and white images, put together, tell the story of the development of this type of photography. Strikingly beautiful, the wall of ‘absolute photography’ is breath taking as it shows one image is nothing until it interacts with the others. The exhibition ‘Studio Blumenfeld’ readdresses this principle as each photo only exists in accordance with the others. The mischievous regard of Erwin Blumenfeld is on show until June 4, 2017. Don't miss it.
This exhibition made our Top 10 exhibitions not to miss during Mois de la photo - make sure you check out others.