Lot 52: Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962) Nu Reposé

Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962)
Nu Reposé, 1937 Gelatin silver print, signed in ink on the recto.11 3/4 x 14 7/8in (24.8 x 37.8cm)

Provenance: With Galerie Gérard Levy, ParisAccording to Laure Albin-Guillot, she turned to photography "to save her life". She was a trail blazer; in 1922 she won a gold medal in a contest sponsored by the Revue Française de Photographie and the first to hold a solo exhibition of 40 prints at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1925. A regular contributor to avant-garde magazines Vu and Arts et Métiers Graphiques. Albin-Guillot was also elected president of the French Société des Artistes Photographes and her work was included in the first independent Salon of Photography held at the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées in June 1928.Alongside illustrious contemporaries such as Germaine Krull, Lisette Model, Dora Maar and Madame d'Ora, Laure Albin-Guillot is known for her very personal approach to erotic subject matter and for her technical mastery of the medium. The following lot Nu Debout, lot 53, for example, was produced on Fresson charcoal paper, a highly sophisticated process, producing a "pixelated" finish, that highlighted the texture of the model's skin. On her retirement from photography in 1954, Albin-Guillot claimed her greatest contribution to photography was her book illustrations, such as nudes for Henry de Motherlant's 1922 La Déesse Cypris and her erotic studies for poet Paul Valéry's Le Narcisse the following year. This print, Nu Reposé, lot 52, was made for Peter Lewys' notorious 1894 book Douze Chansons de Bilitis, published posthumously in 1937. Albin-Guillot's image provocatively framed and with its lesbian overtones, was shocking for its time.