PARIS.- For its first exhibition of the new season Galerie ARGENTIC offers an until now unpublished and exclusive selection of approximately thirty photographs from the archives of Roger Schall (1904-1995) which in most cases have never been exhibited.

Roger Schall was an inter-war photographer, a contemporary of Brassaï, and excelled both in photo-reportage, of which he was one of the pioneers, and in fashion or portrait photography. In the early 1930s, the Leica and Rolleiflex “revolution” enabled him to satisfy his passion for the image taken from real life.

Paris was his special terrain of exploration, and the night enabled him to capture and to reveal the sensitivities and contours that are so particular of this city of contrasts, with a real power.

THE FASCINATION OF NIGHT
As a special environment for the Romantics of the 18th century, the night is an object of fascination for artists, first of all through the special status they accord to dreams and mystery. In the night, the constraints associated with humanity and all the limitations of ordinary life, fade under a black shroud. Everything is enveloped in indistinct contours and the way is opened to the most unreal visions.

The theme of night was also one of the preoccupations of many musicians from the early 19th century, such as Chopin or Schumann. From the early days of photography and at the dawn of the 20th century, night, rather than being assimilated with the fantastical as in poetry or in literature, is often associated with a realist and humanist representation, if it is not presented as a locus of anxiety, blindness, danger or confusion.

PARIS, CITY OF ALL POSSIBILITIES
Paris subjugates and hypnotises artists. Their fascination for the capital has never wavered and in every era they have spontaneously represented this city, and sometimes even influenced it.

Whether lively or deserted, Paris in the early 20th century offered an immense range of possibilities for interpretations and representations, at the same time a two-faced entity: both a place of tensions (political, social, economic) and also of promise, open to new possibilities.

Roger Schall photographs the Parisian night in a solitary way. From the lights and nocturnal characters that he captures, a different city emerges, one that is unfamiliar and unknown. During his long walks, he renders the invisible visible, depicts these scenes of nocturnal life, the décors, the city and the Parisians themselves.

He transforms the classical rigour of the architecture into an intimate tableaux, fixing for an instant the fugitive silhouettes and glances. A resolutely humanistic dynamic of Paris shines through these photographs, like a vital spirit, an impetus.

Roger Schall is as much interested in the forgotten streets as the emblematic sites and can make the hidden, dark, enigmatic spaces talk, with the same grandeur and electric lights of the wide boulevards, shop signs and monuments.

Anonymous beings appear in the foreground of a picture which draws our attention away from the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur, even though it may be bathed in light. The damp cobble stones and the brightly lit windows of the rue Saint-Julien Le Pauvre reveal the solitude of a man and his dog. Similarly, a deserted alley, now buried under concrete, guides our eyes up to the high clock on the Gare de Lyon.

Roger Schall frames his scenes from the front, playing with perspectives, straight lines and imperfect, sometimes uneven diagonals of the city landscapes, he liberates himself from the classical, pictorial composition.

He interprets the city to maximum advantage by adopting a neutral position, that of the simple observer passing by, without sentimentalism or the picturesque, which might perhaps explain the relative incomprehension of his contemporaries who preferred people to tell them a story.

From this very personal, and largely unknown – to the general public - work, Roger Schall delivers a sensitive and sincere interpretation of this Paris of the 1930s, a Paris of contrasts: between shade and light, majesty and poverty.

ROGER SCHALL, AN ARTISTIC SENSITIVITY
Roger Schall (1904-1995) is one of the photographers who marked the 1930s. His highly diverse oeuvre deals with every domain of photography: from major reportage to the nude, via architecture, fashion, landscapes, animals, industrial reportage and world capitals, starting with Paris. His artistic soul and his optimism always lead him to emphasise what is beautiful.

His training in drawing and painting are in this respect useful tools: “I have always attached a great deal of importance to drawing and to painting because I believe that one cannot be a good photographer without being a good drawer.”

He discovered his passion for photography in 1918, working with his father, who was himself a portrait photographer. Ten years later, the Leica and Rolleiflex “revolution” enabled him to satisfy his passion for the image taken from real life, in Paris as well as throughout France.

CHOICE AND DISCRETION
His first publications in the revues Paris Magazine and Art & Médecine, from 1932, were noticed by the great press patrons of the period. The commissions for reportages then followed and his studio in Montmartre, created in 1931 with his brother, became a veritable photographic agency, producing over 150 covers for the main international magazines: Vu, Vogue, L’Illustration, Picture Post, Bystander, Life, Paris Match, etc...

For Vogue, he photographed fashion in a reportage style, with a natural movement and décor, and took pictures of many of his subjects at races, dances, and even motor car concours d’élégance… However, throughout his career he retained his independence, opting to work for himself, and was not associated with an agency, or a particular magazine, despite many offers, particularly from Paris Match.

AN ARTIST, WITNESS TO HIS AGE
From 1939, word events put paid to the activity of the agency. When he was shut down Roger Schall returned to Paris, his favourite subject, occupied by the Germans, and then liberated, a subject of permanent reportage until 1945.

As an artist who was witness to the greatest events, he captured historic moments such as the Nuremberg Congress in 1938, the marriage of the sons of the Pasha of Marrakesh, the arrival of the Normandie cruise liner in New York or the queen’s jubilee in London.