Les amies de Place Blanche / Christer Strömholm |
These
beautiful photographs of
transgender women, in Paris
from the late 1950s and early 1960s were taken by Swedish photographer
Christer
Strömholm, who traveled to Paris in the late-fifties, where he hoped to
create
a new kind of night-life street photography. Strömholm lived in the Red
Light
district, around Place Blanche and Pigalle, where he made friends with
many of
the young transgender women who worked the streets and hotels to make a
living.
In 1983, Strömholm published
many of these photographs in
his book Les Amies de Place Blanche. In his
introduction to the book he
wrote:
Christer
Strömholm, who died in 2002, is known as the father of Swedish
photography both
for his abiding influence and for his role as a teacher. In the late
1950s and
early 60s, he lived in Paris intermittently and it was there that he
created
his most famous book, Les amies de Place Blanche –
portraits of the
often glamorous transsexuals who comprised a subculture within a
subculture in
the red-light district around Pigalle. It has now been reissued with
newly
commissioned essays by two of the women featured in the book,
Jackie and
Nana.
Les amies de Place Blanche
brought Strömholm both
great acclaim and a degree of notoriety. The black-and-white
photographs, shot
at night in available light, merge street photography and portraiture
and are,
by turns, glamorous and gritty. They capture a lost Paris, sleazy yet
stylish,
subterranean yet flamboyant, at a time when General de Gaulle was in
power and
intent on creating an ultra-conservative France that
echoed his strict
Roman Catholic values. To this end, he reintroduced a long-forgotten
law that
allowed the state to seize the property of landlords who allowed their
premises
to be used by prostitutes.
Strömholm was
initially drawn to the area's edgy subterranean nightlife: the peep
shows, the
strip clubs, the prostitutes and their pimps. Like his subjects, he
worked into
the early hours, trawling the streets, befriending and photographing
his
subjects. For a time, he lived on the fifth floor of the Hôtel Chappe,
where
six of the transsexuals featured in the book also lived. As Christian
Caujolle,
the owner of the Vu photography agency in Paris, notes, Strömholm
"shared
their early afternoon breakfasts… watched them put on make-up and
clothes, went
down with them to the streets as they solicited for clients". This was
a
kind of insider reportage based on trust and friendship. "Everyone knew
what I was doing," Strömholm wrote later. "I never took stolen
pictures." It shows.
The transsexuals
of Place Blanche led a hard life of often dogged survival, but in the
photographs, one senses a camaraderie – between the "girls" and
between the photographer and his subject – as well as an almost
celebratory
defiance. Gina and Nana pose like glamorous film stars, Martine like an
exotic
circus performer, and Jackie like someone who could just as easily have
hung
out at Andy Warhol's Factory in New York in the late 1960s.
Strömholm
offered them total self-expression and they responded accordingly.
Les amies de Place Blanche is, as Strömholm wrote in his original foreword, a book "about insecurity… about humiliation… about the quest for self-identity and the right to live". These themes are not immediately apparent in these wonderful portraits, though, which often have a glamour that befits their subjects' exaggerated self-image, their often unrealisable dreams and desires. A book of longing, then, and a true classic of postwar European photography.
Bron: International Center of Photography
Les amies de Place Blanche by Christer
Strömholm – review / Sean
O'Hagan
The Guardian – The Observer
Tentoonstelling
Christer
Strömholm: Les Amies de Place Blanche
Het
boek Les Amies de Place Blanche is te koop bij de
Guardian Bookshop, prijs: £28.00
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