Photographic portrait

[Leysin, Alpes Vaudoises, janvier 1948].
Vintage silver print (90 x 120 mm), handwritten on the back, framed.

Original proof of the ‘portrait of Leysin’.
Copy of René Char, with his initials on the back, and this note: ‘Albert Camus, young man’.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

René Char personal copy, with his initials on verso, and this note: “Albert Camus jeune homme”.

It was January 1948, and Albert Camus had to be treated for tuberculosis. At the age of thirty-five, he went to the Grand Hôtel sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland (canton of Vaud), where he joined Michel Gallimard, who was staying for the same reason, accompanied by his wife, Janine. The photograph was taken by Janine. They stay from January 19 to February 8.

During this time, Camus completes L’État de siège and begins writing Les Justes.

This famous portrait, a countertype of which later entered the Gallimard archives, was used by the publisher after the Nobel Prize was awarded; it was enlarged several times (175 x 230 mm) and released to the press at the time. Several proofs are known, some autographed or simply signed and dated by Camus (all dated 1958, at the time of the Nobel Prize; at least three). An unsigned print was also in the Gisèle and Mario Prassinos collection (Paris, Auction Art, February 2014, no. 47).

Was this print a gift from Albert Camus to René Char? It’s unlikely – and the note on the back suggests that it was a posthumous transfer, rather than a gift made during his lifetime. The most likely hypothesis is that Char, when moving the office to rue Sébastien Bottin or the studio to rue de Chanaleilles after Camus’s death, picked it up at the time, or that Francine gave it to him as a memento of her friendship. The photograph remained the poet’s property until his death.