Worker and rosace en contre-jour at Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris, ca 1935. © Gaston Paris / BHVP / Roger-Viollet

Roger-Viollet is this magical gallery on rue de Seine where millions of historical negatives owned by the City of Paris are stocked and sold. Recently taken over by photo lover Gilles Taquet, it has become more dynamic and organizes regular exhibitions of their archives. At the time when Centre Pompidou is doing a retrospective of photo reporter Gaston Paris (1903-1964), you can go and see his prints chosen among 15 000 negatives, and acquire them for a modest price. I was surprised by the diversity of this photographer’s style. From surrealist pictures exhibited at Georges Wildenstein’s gallery in January 1938, to theatrical portraits, industrial and urban pictures, and reporting in Berlin after the war, his black and white square Rolleiflex shots are really interesting.

Gaston Paris in uniform when he was photographer in the army, 1945, © Gaston Paris, Roger-Viollet

Of course all of the 80 prints are modern and this takes some of the interest away for collectors but there are a number of issues of VU magazine of which Gaston Paris was the unique photographer on staff and the historical interest of these shots is great enough for the collection to be part of Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, Brassaï and Man ray contributed shots to Vu, an ancestor of Look. An aerial photo of the city dating back to 1936, the Austerlitz viaduct in 1935; also an extraordinary picture of a worker in an airplane manufacture in Meudon in 1936, which is very reminiscent of Marc Riboud’s painter on the Eiffel Tower in 1953. I wonder if Riboud had ever seen it?

Backstage at Folies Bergères, 1937, © Gaston Paris, Roger-Viollet

His surrealist pictures of Notre Dame’s stainless glass windows and airplane factories are very modern as is his worker shot as a shadow in “contre jour”. His job as reporter for Vu magazine took him on the streets and his policeman in the snow storm in 1940, or his circus shots, clown faces or Folies Bergères crude pictures are great fun.  A very romantic portrait of Brigittte Bardot in 1954-1955 and a charming one of Joséphine Baker at Théâtre Marigny, in December 1934 in Jacques Offenbach’s “La Créole”, show the sensitivity of this photographer.

Worker on a building site, France, 1938, © Gaston Paris, Roger-Viollet

The last pictures of the show strike a darker note with images of the Spanish war refugees on the street, in January 1939. In 1935,  he photographed Joséphine Baker in her feathers, poor kids on the street in the suburbs and a series of shots at Musée Grévin of wax faces of Einstein and Edith Piaf and Greta Garbo. One of the curiosities of the show is his “photo novel” pictures of women with a gun or being raped by a masked man in “Nightmare”, 1953.  The actual publications of these pictures have not yet been found.

Gilles Taquet runs the gallery at 6 rue de Seine

Exhibition Gaston Paris at Roger-Viollet until April 23. Prints range from 230 € to 520€ depending on size. And at Centre Pompidou until April 18.