If you love Paris, you’ll love this exhibit. Higher Pictures gallery is showing a collection of postcards from the 1920s by photographer Pierre Yves Petit. In addition to the patina of age in these photographs, there is a deliberate moodiness captured through light, shadow and subject-matter. According to the gallery, Petit (who called himself Yvon), preferred to photograph at sunrise and sunset, thus working “the drama of the sublime, making stunning, hypnotizing and beautiful pictures. Yvon’s style evokes other flâneurs of the time such as Eugéne Atget and André Kertész.
Untapped correspondent David Hecht, who checked out the exhibit says that “Yvon’s minute postcards contain a surprising combination of grandeur and intimacy in lonely Parisian public spaces. The sense of quiet and peace in these images belies their situation. They also manage to render the familiar slightly strange, taking scenes with unmistakable landmarks and displaying them from angles that still seem novel even 90 years on, or perspectives that cast new light on old forms.”
Michelle is the founder of Untapped New York and the author of The Art Spy (HarperOne, forthcoming) Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York Hidden Bars & Restaurants, and Broadway. michelleyoungwriter.com
