Maurice Tabard

Maurice Tabard (July 12th 1897, Lyon - February 23rd 1984, Nice) was a Photographe French.

Biographical reference marks

It and born in a family of silky, a father photo hobbyist and a mother musician. He intends himself for the violin, but fails the Academy and becomes naturally draftsman on silk in a Lyons factory.

In 1914 , his/her father takes it along with him at the time of a business trip to the the United States. It off registers it in the New York Institute Photography and Tabard, making odd jobs to survive, settles a first studio of photographer. In 1922, after the death of his father, it presents some portrait to a large New Yorkean photographer, who engages it, and he becomes thus portraitist for a rich person customers. At the time of its passage to Washington, it will make the portrait of president Calvin Coolidge with the White House.

In 1928 , it returns to France and becomes fashion photographer for various reviews of which the Garden of the Modes and Considering whose Philippe Soupault introduced the director to him.

It is about this time that it meets Magritte.

In 1933 takes place its first exposure personal, in Paris. It bound of friendship with Brassaï, Kertesz and Man Ray for which it has a great admiration. It practices the solarization (Sabattier effect, discovered in 1862) which is at that time a little the trademark of Man Ray (which often claims to have invented it).

In 1934 , he is photographer, alternatively with Roger Parry, on the plate of turning of Atalante of Jean Vigo.

In 1938 , its photographs are shown with the Musée of Modern art of New York during the exposure “Photography 1839-1937”.

In 1939-1940 , it directs the photo studios of the review Marie-Claire , folded up with Lyon, not-occupied zone.

In 1942 , he is photographer of plate for Gaumont, he accompanies the etnographic mission Decharme in Africa and carries out documentary films and many photographs in Algérie, with the Niger and the Mali.

In 1944 it engages with the service cinema of the armies and will remain there until the end of the war.

In 1946 it is recalled to the United States where it teaches photography while going on frequent journeys to Paris where it continues its personal research and fact of the reports of mode.

In 1951 , it returns to France, but gone on many journeys to the United States to give conferences on the composition in photography.

It withdraws professional life in 1966 .

Work

After its return in France, Tabard attends the avant-garde S of Montparnasse and installs its studio with Boulogne-Billancourt, city then in full cultural effervescence. The Studios of Billancourt (cinema) there have just been installed, Chagall, Landowski and Le Corbusier, inter alia, lives there where there work; it is the city of the patron Albert Kahn who sends scenario writers and photographers on mission throughout the world.

The artist creates there then with complete freedom, releasing himself from his rather traditional style hitherto, and endeavouring to define his purely photographic language. He moves away from the documentary photograph, of report, naturalist.

Its great concern is the composition of the image. It will be the work of its life.

As of this moment, Tabard is pursued the study of the components of a photograph: objects, their forms, their matters, their lightings, their reports/ratios formal rather than their appearance. It is a work of composition, as in painting. It is at that time that it meets Magritte has which it will pay homage in several of its images thereafter.

the object of its research is the space of the image, not the outside world, it is in the unrevealed one (…) .

There the essence of its contribution to the photography is, which it starts to theorize as of this time: the photographer creates an image, it does not represent reality, the outside world . He is due much to the expression “photographs art”, and even in its commercial work, photographs of mode and publicity, he will stick to always complying with the rules which he gives himself as of this time.

The images which it carries out at that time show the cross influence of the Bauhaus, which it discovered at the time of a stay in surrealist Germany and that it attends. He will be always close to certain surrealist, but will not adhere to the movement whose engagement on the left is appropriate to him hardly. High bourgeoisie, it will remain always rather of right-hand side, and it will be very clear in its reactions to the movement of May 68.

When he discovers solarization, about 1932, he looks further into his knowledge of the technique whose Man Ray wants nothing to reveal. Tabard writes an article on the subject for graphic Art and Métiers in 1933. It will be the cause of an irreducible estrangement between the two men, Man Ray not supporting only its invention (!) that is to say thus explained to each and everyone. It is there the opposite of Tabard whose research, as well formal as technical, will make the object of many courses and conferences, especially in the United States, in the following years.

Tabard practices the drawing and studies the painters and their works, Velasquez in particular, near which it refines its comprehension of the rules of the composition. It takes many notes which will be used to enrich its courses and conferences, and which it will join together and order of the years later in a draft treaty the geometry is the foundation of arts which remains new to date.

As of the end of the Years 1940, it is especially active in the United States where Alexey Brodovitch requires of him to join the prestigious team of photographers of the review Harper' S Bazaar , Irving PEN, Richard Avedon and Erwin Blumenfeld. It shares its time between work for Harper' S Bazaar and teaching.

In the years 1960 it falls gradually into the lapse of memory in France, its purified of photography, built design, composed, moved away from the naturalism and of the report, does not correspond any more to the sights of the new generations of photographers. 1975 will have to be waited until so that occur a redécouverte and a late recognition.

Homages

In 1948, an special issue of the review of the Photographer' S Society off America is devoted to him.
an exposure homage organized to Chicago, Tabard off receives a distinction for services returned with the Photographer' S Society America .
Grand Prix of the Town of Paris of Photography in 1983.
an exposure homage to the Living room of Photography, in Paris, in 1985.

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