Photo exhibition: Léon Herschtritt, A life for photography!
Venue: Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, Paris, France
from 06-12-2016 to 23-12-2016, Open from Tuesday to Saturday, from 2 pm to 6 pm
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Born in 1936, Léon Herschtritt published his first report, Les Gosses d’Algérie, in the magazine Réalités in 1960, and received – at the age of 24! – the prestigious Niépce Prize of the Gens d’images association. In Paris, he worked as a freelance photographer and Parisian correspondent for the Camera Press agency. He published his reportages and portraits of celebrities in magazines and joined the famous club of photography 30×40.
Through friendships, encounters or commissions, the young Leon had breakfast with Jacques Prévert and his friends every Sunday, photographed Gainsbourg, Sartre or Jane Fonda, witnessed May 68 or documented the prostitution. With a deeply humanistic approach, an innate sense of composition and a true ethic, Léon Herschtritt photographed France in the sixties. The world was changing, between the Market of the Halles and the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, between the mini-skirts and the Café de Flore, between the slums in La Courneuve and the Jardin du Luxembourg. In 1961, he went to Berlin to photograph the first Christmas of the Wall, a tragedy between illuminated Christmas trees and a snowman. In Africa, he went to document the end of the colonies for the photo library of the Ministry of Cooperation. In Paris, Léon Herschtritt took pictures in the streets and cafes, of children and celebrities…
This retrospective exhibition, to celebrate the 80th birthday of the photographer, proposes his gentle and straight glance in black and white on the sixties.
Submitted by Galerie Esther Woerdehoff
