TABARD MAURICE (1897 1984) Film Solarisée No 4

Sale 2146 - Lot 315

Unsold

Estimate: $ 80,000 - $ 120,000

TABARD, MAURICE (1897-1984)
"Film Solarisée, No. 4." Two attached silver prints, 12 3/4x5 1/2 and 10 3/4x5 1/2 inches (32.4x14 and 27.3x14 cm.), overall size 23x5 1/2 inches (58.4x14 cm.), with Tabard's signature and date, in ink, on recto and his hand stamp, title and annotations, in pencil, on mount verso. 1936

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Gifted by Tabard to a Private European Collector.
Maurice Tabard (Photo Poche), 46 (variant).

Maurice Tabard was a major talent associated with "La Nouvelle Vision Française." A photographer comfortable in many different genres, he created avant-garde images using solarization techniques and photo-montage as well as nudes, portraits, and fashion photographs. Tabard, who was born in France, spent many years living and working in the U.S. He studied photography in New York City in 1914, but did most of his creative work in his native country. He contributed images to all the important art and fashion journals of the period, including Jazz, Bifur, and Vu, and worked with Alexey Brodovitch in 1928 and 1948. He was also friends with Man Ray and Rene Magritte, to whom he dedicated the photo-montage "Eye Sea."

This apparently unique oversize work, in which the photographer has enlarged frames of a 35mm film strip onto two attached sheets of photographic paper, is a tour-de-force of image-making. The unidentified subject, who resembles figures in Japanese theatre, is solarized and distorted. Although the images appear to be identical, each frame is represented differently. The figure's bizarre, elongated fingers, which are weirdly attenuated, are surreal in appearance.

Later on, in the 1940s, Tabard explored the cinema when he traveled to Africa and made his first documentary film. During World War II, he served as a photographer and film-maker. After the war, he made another film strip series, in which the image moves from a correct exposure to a solarization. He characterized this study as "intro-inversion."