Jacobson, Pierre Dubreuil Photographs 1896-1935, fig. 23 there titled and dated Spectacles, circa 1929 for a variant
Catalogue Essay
Today Pierre Dubreuil’s photographs are being re-considered as some of the most interesting proto-Modernist and Modernist work created in the first three decades of the 20th Century. Both the present lot, Translucidités, circa 1930 and Mickey's Joy, lot 176, are superb examples of his Modernist period. Both are hand coated palladium prints made posthumously by Tom Jacobson in cooperation with Dubreuil’s descendants using Dubeuil’s own diapostives to create enlarged negatives. The diapositives from which the enlarged negatives were created for these two prints are being offered as part of lot 172. In the present lot, Translucidités, the sight enhancing eye-ware fracture light into elongated peeks of shadows and highlights. In Mickey's Joy, the balloon-like masks of the luminary of motion pictures (who in 1928 debuted in one of the first sound cartoons), are lit from behind like negatives on a light box. In a nod towards Cubism, the objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled into an abstracted image. Please reference the introduction prior to lot 171 for an essay on the photographer.
circa 1930 Palladium print, printed later. 17 5/8 x 14 3/8 in. (44.8 x 36.5 cm) Signed, titled, dated, numbered 5/6 and copyright annotation, all by the printer, in pencil on the verso.