Le Photojournalisme des années 1930 à nos jours: structures, culture et public ed. by Karine Taveaux-Grandpierre, Joëlle Beurier (review)

This wide-ranging collection maps out the terrain of a key feature of the modern print media: namely, the mass circulation of photo-based magazines that emerged across the world in the inter-war period and gained particular momentum in France after the Second World War. Contributions are organized along three broad thematic lines, offering an effective triangulation of the field and its evolution: the role of photojournalism in portraying news and events; the relative significance of particular actors such as photographers or magazine owners; and the economic, political, and cultural forces shaping the sector. The volume’s strength also lies in its historical perspective. Following an overview of the industry’s development during the inter-war period (Michèle Martin), essays draw out trends in the post-war and contemporary periods. The emphasis is on the French market, with case studies examining a range of titles, including the path-breaking women’s magazine Elle, launched by Hélène Lazareff in 1945 (Karine Taveaux-Grandpierre); the youth-oriented Salut les copains!, which had its heyday during the latter decades of the Trente Glorieuses (Audrey Orillard); the brief and curious tale of Nous les garçons et les filles, a PCF-funded rival to Salut les copains! launched in 1963 (Philippe Buton); and Paris Match, in many ways the lodestone of photojournalism in France. Indeed, Paris Match serves as a thread connecting a number of the articles of the collection, which consider the magazine’s prehistory and rise to prominence in the 1950s (Jean-Pierre Bacot); the importance and influence of the magazine’s owner, press magnate Jean Prouvost (Claire Blandin); its construction of sport celebrity in the 1970s and 1980s (Michaël Attali and Gilles Montérémal); and its use of photography in coverage of conflicts in central Africa during the 1990s (François Robinet). As such, the volume makes a substantial contribution to research on a magazine which, despite its political importance in post-war France and (as Roland Barthes, for one, made clear) the significant ideological work it performed in asserting social, cultural, and political orthodoxies, has been given surprisingly little sustained attention by scholars of French cultural history. Some contributions open up an international and comparative perspective. Gianni Haver and Valérie Rolle investigate the fortunes of the Swiss publication L’Illustré, a local rival to more powerful, France-based titles. Fabienne Maillard underlines the transnational mobility of photographers and other actors through her discussion of French photographer Pierre Verger, who worked for the Brazilian news magazine O’Curzeiro in the immediate post-war period. Orillard’s analysis of the representation of Johnny Halliday in Salut les copains! underscores the important role played by mass-circulation magazines in the construction of celebrity during the post-war period; but while the theme returns again in the discussion by Attali and Montérémal of coverage given to sports stars in Paris Match, it is one that might have been foregrounded and explored more explicitly within the volume as a whole. That said, the collection is a welcome and very useful starting point for further consideration of a vital aspect of the public sphere in modern France.