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Paris, last Bastille Day before the War

Photograph
1939 (photographed), 1993 (printed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading women photographers in the inter-war period. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, she initially pursued an academic career before moving to Paris in 1930 to concentrate on photography. In the early 1930s Bing had been a prolific photographer, well-known for her modernist, journalistic city scenes.
In 1937 she married the pianist and musicologist Konrad Wolff. This image, taken two years later, is tinged with a foreboding of sadness and memory. The year that Bing took this photograph, 1939, she and her husband were interned in separate camps in the South of France as enemy aliens, and in 1941 emigrated to New York. The sense of ominous foreboding is present in this cloudy cityscape. To add to the poignancy it was taken on Bastille Day, usually a national day of celebration in France.


Object details

Category
Object type
TitleParis, last Bastille Day before the War (assigned by artist)
Materials and techniques
Gelatin-silver print
Brief description
'Paris, last Bastille Day before the War', photograph by Ilse Bing (1899-1998), 1939, printed later
Physical description
Black and white photograph of the Paris skyline on the last Bastille day before the second World War
Dimensions
  • Sheet height: 28cm
  • Sheet width: 35.4cm
  • Image height: 23.6cm
  • Image width: 33.3cm
Marks and inscriptions
  • 'ILSE BING 1939 / 1993 / Paris last bastille day before the war / Champs Elysees' (Hand written in pencil on reverse by Bing)
  • 'ILSE BING / 1939' (Hand written in black ink in the bottom left hand corner of the image)
  • 'Paris last Bastille Day before the war' (Hand written in pencil on reverse by Bing)
Credit line
Bequeathed by Ilse Bing Wolff
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Summary
Ilse Bing (1899-1998) was one of several leading women photographers in the inter-war period. Born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt, she initially pursued an academic career before moving to Paris in 1930 to concentrate on photography. In the early 1930s Bing had been a prolific photographer, well-known for her modernist, journalistic city scenes.
In 1937 she married the pianist and musicologist Konrad Wolff. This image, taken two years later, is tinged with a foreboding of sadness and memory. The year that Bing took this photograph, 1939, she and her husband were interned in separate camps in the South of France as enemy aliens, and in 1941 emigrated to New York. The sense of ominous foreboding is present in this cloudy cityscape. To add to the poignancy it was taken on Bastille Day, usually a national day of celebration in France.
Collection
Accession number
E.3074-2004

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Record createdOctober 13, 2005
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