She is our collaborator Zoe Isle de Beauchaine who is the curator of the exhibition Ann1930s and modernity: thege d’gold from medical journalss which highlights the link between the pharmaceutical sector and photographic modernity through three publications: Art and Metens, Better Living et Diversion.
Before the arrival of television and then social networks, images between the wars circulated mainly in the press and illustrated publications. Periodicals like Vu are the symbol of this new use, the golden age of printed images and (typo)graphic games. Lesser known detail: the pharmaceutical industry also took part in this revolution.
Three French magazines, Art and Medicine, Better Living and Diversionfinanced and published by laboratories are during this period distributed to the medical profession. Their goal? Promote their products. Their particularity? Medicine or medications are barely mentioned. These magazines give pride of place to literature as well as to the big names in photography: Man Ray, Brassaï, Laure Albin-Guillot, André Kertész, Germaine Krull, François Kollar, etc. Several of these “advertorials” go as far as to limit medical content to advertising pages only, to favor literary, artistic, humorous and tourist subjects, intended for practitioners.
Art and Medicine, Better Living and Diversion stand out for the notoriety of their contributors as much as for the elegance of their model. Modern layout, richness of illustrations, printing quality, these magazines compete in creativity to attract the attention of doctors. Each has its specialty: Art and Medicine, devotes each issue to a French region, Diversion to a country and Mieux Vivre to a leisure activity: skiing, flowers, bathing, music… The latter prides itself on bringing together “the most beautiful photographic documents chosen among the best […] with the sole concern for their attractiveness, due to their beauty, their originality, their lightAndre, their contrasts, the power of the recorded movement. »
The photos extend over a full page, or respond to each other in a sophisticated layout, at Diversion especially where graphics are king: for each issue, a new typography is imagined to stick to the theme, sometimes merging image and text. This creativity continues throughout the pages in which the collage mixes with the calligram while the drawing extends the photography.
Another field of experimentation: advertising. Advertising photography, which flourished, was then produced by numerous specialized studios. Pharmaceutical periodicals give an overview of the refinement of each advertisement which harmoniously fits the publication and sometimes plays the humor card, as Better Living which creates a facetious dialogue between its claims and the theme of each issue.
If these magazines highlight the unexpected role of the pharmaceutical industry as a disseminator of photographic modernity, their visual creativity is a source of inspiration which still resonates in a very contemporary way.
Zoé Isle de Beauchaiit is
Commissioner of the’exposition
1930s and modernity: the golden age of medical journals
Salons of the Dean of the Faculty of Pharmacy of Paris
PhotoSaintGermain
This text can be found in the SIMONE journal published by the PhotoSaintGermain festival.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to generous loans from the Nicéphore Niépce museum and the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie
