About This Image

Signed (bottom right corner recto in ink) and titled on the vintage image. Photographer's stamp is on verso, along with an annotation and dedication and signature from the artist. A unique piece.

Provence: from artist to French collector.

Pierre Jahan (September 9, 1909–February 21, 2003) was a French photographer who often worked in a Surrealist style.

Born in Amboise and introduced to photography by his family at a very early age, Jahan received his first professional commission when he moved to Paris in 1933 through a meeting with advertising executive Raymond Gid. In 1936 he joined the Rectangle group of photographers. This group, founded by Emmanuel Sougez, among others, encouraged him in his career as a photographer.

In 1938 Jahan photographed the famous Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme and later made portraits of artists and writers such as Picasso, Braque, Colette and Cocteau. By 1939 Jahan started documenting wartime Paris from the occupation to the liberation. He photographed at the Louvre when the masterpieces were removed for protection during the war and then again when they returned home.

During the Occupation, he worked for the magazine "Images de France", making portraits of celebrity figures such as Colette, and he produced large series of pictures such as "La mort et les statues," published in 1946 with a text by Jean Cocteau. They also co-published a book in which Cocteau's poem "Plain Chant" is illustrated by photographed nudes (1947).

A passionate experimenter with a strong interest in Surrealism, Jahan produced many collages and photomontages, which he used freely for the many advertising commissions that came his way after the end of World War II. Jahan wrote, "'Surrealism…takes great advantage of equivocation and lends itself to a number of transpositions', said André Breton. I think that the photographer who suggests, describes or finds so much (if he has the duty never to falsify) also has the right to use his photos as material capable of generating the Dream. Surrealism is often derisory or cruel, why couldn't it be kind and poetic?"

A committed activist for photographers' rights, he helped to found the professional association Le Rectangle and the French federation of art photographers (FAPC), of which he became vice-chairman. In 1949 he joined the professional photographers' association Le Groupe des XV alongside Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, and others, to lobby for the conservation of France's photographic heritage. He took part in their exhibitions and in those held by the Salon National de la Photographie.

He died in Paris.

His work is in the Centre Pompidou, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, the Archives des Musées Nationaux, Fonds National d'Art Contemporain and the Institut de la Mémoire de l'Édition Contemporaine in Caen, where the Jahan collection is held. The Musée Réattu exhibited a retrospective of his work in 2010.

Internationally, Jahan's photos are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; J. Paul Getty Museum; Moscow House of Photography Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Orleans Museum of Art; and the Brooklyn Museum.

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