Timed to coincide with Paris Photo (a series of photography exhibitions and events all over the French capital during the month of November) Parisian auction companies held three days of specialised sales (19 – 21 November) generating a total revenue of €14m (Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Piasa and Ader Nordmann & Kapandji Morhange) and 32 auction records.
Between photo-journalism and picturesque paintings of society, humanist photography is a superb witness of people’s mannerisms and customs. The core of this artistic current occurred after WWII through to the late 1960s. The photographs of Robert DOISNEAU, Édouard BOUBAT, BRASSAÏ, Willy RONIS, and others, fed the newspapers and magazines of the era …and are often reproduced today. These photographs – charged with emotion and capturing fleeting moments of everyday life – have the undeniable documentary value of authenticity, but simultaneously, via their black and white medium, express a certain aesthetic of nostalgia. Over the years, this duality has particularly attracted collectors who, today, are not frightened to pay high prices for big names in photography.