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Abstract :
[en] After three years of digitization – resulting in a digitized corpus of +500,000 pages of Belgian interwar mass-market magazines, searchable in full-text in the digital archive of the Royal Library of Belgium (BelgicaPeriodicals) –, Artpresse aims at studying the discourses on art in these highly visual sources including their modes of presentation of artworks. In this context, I would like to present the multifaceted work of Germaine Van Parys (1893-1983), a pioneer in the field of Belgian press photography and one of the few photographers whose name has come to light in the Artpresse corpus.
During the interbellum – the period of expansion of the illustrated press driven by the rotogravure printing –, while working as a freelancer for newspapers (Le Soir, La Meuse) and magazines (L’Illustration, Le Soir illustré), Van Parys co-founded the Association of Reporters Photographers of Belgium, which contributed to the recognition of this field. She created a photographic archive that bears witness to the cultural, social, and political life in Belgium at the time. A large part of these images can be consulted on the GermaineImage database managed by one of her successors, Nico Gastmans, whom I'd like to thank for the information he provided.
The reproduction of artworks is a little-known part of Van Parys’s production. Although it was not her specialty, she took great care in the few photo reports of art exhibitions she produced during the official visits by members of the Belgian royalty. Her photographs of paintings were cut and laid out in their original frames to be published in the Belgian illustrated weekly Hebdo (1931-1940) with the caption "Ph. Germaine Van Parys. Exclusivity Pim" (from the name of the magazine’s publisher and advertising company). This interesting but as yet unexplored aspect of the democratization of culture through printed mass media will be the main focus of my presentation.
