{"id":6829,"date":"2017-01-18T10:36:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T10:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=6829"},"modified":"2017-01-17T10:41:53","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T10:41:53","slug":"charmes-de-londres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=6829","title":{"rendered":"Charmes de Londres"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have quite a collection of books of photographs of London (as well as probably a few hundred thousand of my own pictures) but one of my favourites is ‘Charmes de Londres<\/em>‘, credited to Jacques Prevert<\/em> with photographs by D’Iziz-Bidermanas<\/em>. Although most of the texts are poems by Prevert, it also has some quotations by others including William Blake and a Picasso drawing.<\/p>\n

I didn’t buy this when it first came out in 1952, as I was then only seven and penniless – and it wasn’t in any case for sale, but came across it in an Oxfam shop perhaps 15 years ago, paying \u00a319.50 for a copy in good condition. Perhaps remarkably you can still find copies of the original edition, published ‘hors commerce<\/em>‘ for members of La Guilde Du Livre<\/em> in Lausanne and printed by heliogravure (photogravure) on wood pulp free paper, for only a pound or two more. The previous year’s collaboration, published in the same way,\u00a0 Grand Bal du Printemps<\/em><\/a>, will set you back around 25 times as much.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason you can still find copies of that original version (there are also later editions) is that it was a relatively large print run, with 10,300 numbered copies (mine is No. 4871) as well as 30 labelled I to XXX for the organisers of the guild. Although photographers often complain about getting second billing to writers when then works are published, Prevert had a much larger fan base!<\/p>\n

The book is a reminder of the fine printing that could be achieved with photogravure, and it matches the mood of Iziz’s images perfectly. A recent post on Spitalfields Life,\u00a0 Israel Bidermanas\u2019 London<\/a>, reproduces a fine selection of over 20 images from the book, without Prevert’s poems (which are of course in French) and gives a good impression of the subjects, but shows them in a more modern tonal interpretation, more contrasty and with intense blacks, which perhaps loses something of the gloomy charm of the original publication. This was a post-war London still under a gloomy miasma, though probably the real pea-soupers defeated the photographer few if any images have a clear distance.<\/p>\n

The best way to see more of his pictures on-line seems to be to search on Google Images<\/em> or Pinterest<\/em> for ‘Izis Bidermanas<\/em>‘.<\/p>\n

Iziz was one of many fine photographers of Paris, and another was Willy Roni<\/em>s<\/a> (1910-2009). In 2004, French editor Alain Dhouailly published a limited edition of 130 copies of a set of 12 or his images printed by heliogravure which gives some background on the process<\/a>. Ronis’s work is fairly widely avaialable and on galleries on the web, for example at Hacklebury Fine Art<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have quite a collection of books of photographs of London (as well as probably a few hundred thousand of my own pictures) but one of my favourites is ‘Charmes de Londres‘, credited to Jacques Prevert with photographs by D’Iziz-Bidermanas. Although most of the texts are poems by Prevert, it also has some quotations by … Continue reading Charmes de Londres<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-history","category-photographers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6829"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6831,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6829\/revisions\/6831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}