Rathbone Gallery announce an exhibition celebrating the works of French photographic duo Blanc et Demilly. At the forefront of French photography from 1927-1964, Blanc et Demilly remain largely unknown despite exhibiting alongside some of the most influential photographers of the time, including Brassaï, Doisneau and Man Ray. The vast bulk of their work has existed as exhibition prints concentrated in a single family collection; a treasure trove hidden away and only recently broken up.
Théodore Blanc (1891–1985) and Antoine Demilly (1892-1964) met through their father-in-law Edouard Bron. He ran a photography studio in Lyon from the early 1880s. Bron had two daughters; one daughter married her father’s apprentice, Demilly after his return from the Great War; the other daughter married keen amateur photographer Blanc. The two men became a single photographic identity for the next 40 years; two names in red pencil on prints underlining a single artistic vision.
They took over Bron’s studio in rue Grenette in 1924. Under their direction it boomed, employing up to 30 people. It was outside of the commercial world that their artistic vision blossomed. From the 1920s they were amongst the first in France to take advantage of the possibilities offered by using portable and discreet Leica and Rolleiflex cameras. Experimenting with new techniques the pair worked with portraiture, still life, nudes, abstraction, surrealism and reportage – pushing the boundaries of the medium in all its forms and determined to establish it as an art form.
In 1935 they took the revolutionary step of establishing a dedicated photography gallery in rue Carnot. It was here that the vintage works on sale at Rathbone were first viewed.
After the war, in 1946, they exhibited at the first French national exhibition of photography, alongside Sougez, Edouard Boubat and Robert Doisneau, and sat on the jury between 1947 and 1959.
Rathbone is exhibiting seventeen vintage silver gelatin prints that include portraits, still lives and photo-montages; seventeen works illustrating the breadth, consistency, quality and beauty of four decades of photography.
Notes to editors:
They had a three-month long retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in 2000
They inaugurated a photography prize celebrated with an annual ball given by a French Prime Minister
They published dozens of books and photographic journals
They exhibited alongside Doisneau, Sougez and Boubat
They were published alongside Kertesz, Krull, Man Ray, Sougez and Brassai
They exhibited at, and for 13 years judged, the annual photographic salon at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Rathbone Gallery, 42 Windmill Street, London W1T 2JZ www.rathbonegallery.com
