Portrait photographique

This original print comes from the Sirot-Angel collection, named after one of the earliest French collectors of photographic negatives and prints.

“Henri Martinie, born in Corrèze in 1885, distinguished himself particularly in the literary field. In his Paris studio on the Rue de Penthièvre, he produced between 1920 and 1940 an exceptional body of portraits of French and foreign writers visiting Paris, among them Philippe Soupault, Georges Bernanos, Jean Cocteau, James Joyce, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Paul Éluard. The Studio Martinie also worked regularly at the Assemblée nationale, where he enjoyed a reserved position, producing large series of portraits of deputies up until the 1950s. Henri Martinie died in Paris in 1965. His entire output — nearly 15,000 negatives — was acquired by the Agence Roger-Viollet in 1968” (Roger-Viollet website notice). A variant of this portrait (in profile) was reproduced in the catalogue Les Livres surréalistes de la librairie José Corti (1932), where the photographer’s name is given as “Ph. Martinie” rather than Henri.