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Marc Riboud
(1923 - 2016)
Le Peintre de la Tour Eiffel (Painter of the Eiffel Tower), Paris, 1953
Estimate
€ 4.000 - 5.000
Sold
€ 5.160
The price includes buyer's premium
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Information
Gelatin silver print, printed later
cm 40,7 x 30,3 (cm 36 x 24 picture) | 16 x 12 in. (14.1 x 9.4 in. picture)
Dated and signed in black ink on the white inferior recto margin
cm 40,7 x 30,3 (cm 36 x 24 picture) | 16 x 12 in. (14.1 x 9.4 in. picture)
Dated and signed in black ink on the white inferior recto margin
Literature
M. Riboud (edited by), Marc Riboud: Photographs at Home and Abroad, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1988, coverM. Riboud (edited by), Marc Riboud, Photo Choisies, la Martinière, Paris, 2000, cover and pl. 8C. Boot (edited by), Magnum Stories, Phaidon, London, 2004, p. 386M. Riboud, C. Chaine (edited by) I for imagine, Tara Books, Chennai, 2010, cover
Let's imagine the scene: it is March 1953 and, as has been the case since its foundation, the Eiffel Tower is undergoing inspections and a cleaning and painting campaign entrusted to a team of painters, the most famous of whom, nicknamed Zazou, meaning extravagant, by his colleagues, knew how to work with ease among the structures of the Tower at great heights above the ground. The news of this work needs to be documented, and the person who wants to do so at all costs is Marc Riboud, a young engineer who, two years earlier, had asked for permission to go and photograph a festival and then never returned to work, preferring Paris to his native Lyon and his camera to his desk. Marc was a courageous man who had fought in the French Resistance among the maquisards during the war, but here he had to overcome his fear of heights. He clings determinedly to the beams and points his Leica at the painter, alternating between horizontal and vertical shots: the last shot on his black-and-white film is the right one because it captures the lightness of the gesture, mocks the danger of the situation and exalts in the composition that taste we recognise as French. It would be the first of countless photographs that Riboud published in Life from then on, but also the beginning of his career at Magnum. Contact
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