Biography
Exhibitions
The
series of hitherto unpublished photographs which follows was taken about
189o
by a young pharmacist named Louis Guichard.
Employing
an ordinary cheap camera, he confined himself to photographing his family and
friends in a garden or the country, yet what he bequeathed us is a unique
document on provincial life at the end of the nineteenth century.
Unlike
the photographers of his time, who succeeded in doing no more than make
involuntary caricatures of their contemporaries, Louis Guichard brought out the
human side of his sitters.
These
authentic documents might well serve as an aid to the rehabilitation of the
family, the provincial life and the bourgeoisie
of
the decade 1890-1900.
The
pharmacist is not lacking in a sense of
humour,
but, if he observes the foibles and puerilities of his models, the
accents first and foremost their simplicity, their candour and their
sentimentality.
The
photographs reveal that the still romantic young men donned their silk hats
and went walking in the forest of a Sunday. The girls took the roles of
angels until the day they fell in love with a soldier's uniform. Contemporaries
of the "poseuses, " the womenfolk remained natural and wore simple
toilettes, slightly trailing. The little girls, rigged up like music hall
performers by overly doting and proud mothers, resembled the models of Renoir
and Manet.
Like
the painters, Louis Guichard detached the spirit of his time : he found his
inspiration in the same extremely simple subjects. Looking at his photographs,
Corot might have recognized his lake, Berthe Morizot her garden and the Douanier
Rousseau his cart.
Even
the technical quality establishes a link between Louis Guichard's
photographs
and painting. The wall before which the children are playing, the
house
front with the closed shutters, the shrubs and small trees make one think of the
subject matter and composition of certain paintings.
The
value of the documents probably depends on the character of this amateur
photographer. In his modest way, he worked like the artists, out of enthusiasm
and for his own pleasure. When he no longer had the time or the taste far
photography, he put his camera aside like an honest man : from 1901 to 1934, the
year of his death, Louis Guichard took not another picture.