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Lot Essay
Bastille Day, Lanterns at Night was taken in 1933, during which time Ilse Bing was rapidly establishing her reputation as one of the pioneers of photography's Golden Age. Working within the avant-garde Parisian art world, Bing exhibited alongside such contemporaries as Man Ray, André Kertész, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1932, her fame also spread to New York, when the dealer Julien Levy began to sell her photographs. In this year, Bing's photographs were included in Levy's New York exhibition 'Modern European Photography: Twenty Photographers'. In 1936, Bing's pictures were included in the first modern photography exhibition held at the Louvre.
An exhibition of Bing's photographs was held in 1998, showing many works that were being exhibited for the first time in sixty years. The literature stated;
'Exclusively using the newly developed Leica camera, Bing took photographs which embraced spontaneity and technical difficulties. Tilting the camera straight down in a perspective distorting view, recording the blurs and movement of modern life, or pushing into the darkly lit clubs and streets of Paris without a flash were among the qualities captured in many of Bing's greatest images.'
Bing's photographs of this time reveal her ambition to embrace technology to create a revolutionary 'new vision'. Within her circle of contemporaries, there was an understanding of the potential of the camera to act as a detached and objective 'third eye'. Its ability to accurately represent real life objects without the subjective associations of the thought process make the resulting images frequently abstract and thoroughly modern.
The present photograph effectively encapsulates this idea. In it, Bing focuses on the movement inherent in the dangling string of lights, and places the contrast between the luminosity of the bulbs and the pitch black of the night sky as central to the image. The link to a particular context is provided by the title, which effectively juxtaposes one of the most important historical events in France against the startling abstraction that the image presents. The photograph is therefore a prime example of Bing's ability to depict the known world in a thoroughly modern way through the use of new technology.
The lightweight and versatile Leica that Bing favoured was behind many of her free, spontaneous photographs, such as Bastille Day. It was a camera also favoured by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who claimed that the Leica 'interrupts the least in the emotional relation between the photographer and his view of the world'.
An exhibition of Bing's photographs was held in 1998, showing many works that were being exhibited for the first time in sixty years. The literature stated;
'Exclusively using the newly developed Leica camera, Bing took photographs which embraced spontaneity and technical difficulties. Tilting the camera straight down in a perspective distorting view, recording the blurs and movement of modern life, or pushing into the darkly lit clubs and streets of Paris without a flash were among the qualities captured in many of Bing's greatest images.'
Bing's photographs of this time reveal her ambition to embrace technology to create a revolutionary 'new vision'. Within her circle of contemporaries, there was an understanding of the potential of the camera to act as a detached and objective 'third eye'. Its ability to accurately represent real life objects without the subjective associations of the thought process make the resulting images frequently abstract and thoroughly modern.
The present photograph effectively encapsulates this idea. In it, Bing focuses on the movement inherent in the dangling string of lights, and places the contrast between the luminosity of the bulbs and the pitch black of the night sky as central to the image. The link to a particular context is provided by the title, which effectively juxtaposes one of the most important historical events in France against the startling abstraction that the image presents. The photograph is therefore a prime example of Bing's ability to depict the known world in a thoroughly modern way through the use of new technology.
The lightweight and versatile Leica that Bing favoured was behind many of her free, spontaneous photographs, such as Bastille Day. It was a camera also favoured by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who claimed that the Leica 'interrupts the least in the emotional relation between the photographer and his view of the world'.