🖋️ “That’s where we’d find the medallions and the locks of hair

🖋️ “That’s where we’d find the medallions and the locks of hair
Portraits of people with white or blonde hair, and dried flowers
“Whose scent mingles with the scents of fruit.”

I came across “Le Monde de Proust: Photographs by Paul Nadar” at @ivressedelire.librairie in Quimper towards the end of the year. Or rather, Max found it for me and was kind enough to let me know that the book was waiting for me. Thanks, Max. 🫶🏻

This “World of Proust” by Nadar has been reprinted several times, but I was not aware of this pocket-sized edition, published by the Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques et des Sites: 124 pages of beautifully reproduced vintage photographs, in a consistent black-and-white palette of grey tones. 🤍🩶🖤 Beneath each portrait and each image is a simple, factual caption: this little book is not just a ‘who’s who’ of Proust’s circle but a genuine tourist guide to Belle Époque Paris: a parade of figures in the studio, photos of interiors, staircases, fireplaces and bathrooms. A sort of visual immersion into the Search. ✨✨

The book opens with a beautiful essay by Anne-Marie Bernard and Agnès Blondel on “The Photographic Portrait”. It serves to trace the connection between Félix Tournachon, known as Nadar – photographer to Hugo and Baudelaire – and his son Paul. It also recalls other eminent figures: Nicéphore Niepce, Daguerre, Fox Talbot and Étienne Carjat, Baudelaire’s portraitist and the photographer behind the almost legendary portrait of Rimbaud as a dishevelled young poet. The CNMHS held collections of photographs spanning a century of photography. 📷🎞️ It became @lecmn in 2000.

The little book dates from 1991 and contained, within its pages, a handwritten letter – written in the style of a rambling account or a prose quatrain – on four postcards 💌 bought at a Nadar exhibition @museeorsay in 1994. 🥺

#PaulNadar #FélixNadar #MarcelProust #LeMondedeProust #photographies #proustagram #CNMHS #MuséedOrsay #ArthurRimbaud