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HARCOURT OBLIGE Josephine Baker c 1941 Poster

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HARCOURT OBLIGE: Josephine Baker, circa 1941. 20x27.5in/51x70cm
This beautiful poster depicts Josephine Baker, the famous French-American dancer in the classic Studio Harcourt portrait from the late 1930's. Combining an early Franco-noir style with silver tone prints, Studio Harcourt became One (1) of the world's most famous photography studios.
Studio Harcourt was opened in Paris in 1934 by the Lacroix brothers, newspaper proprietors who launched numerous publications (Guérir, Vedettes, Archéologia etc), along with Robert Ricci and Cosette Harcourt; the latter had gained considerable experience working in the Manuel brothers' studio. Initially the Studio essentially fulfilled the Lacroix brothers' need for photographs but those pictures, their publication, a well defined strategy and efficient management methods rapidly valorised the Harcourt signature and so attracted the clientele on which the Studio's reputation would be founded.
From 1938 Studio Harcourt, housed in a sumptuous townhouse at 49 Avenue d'Iéna, quickly became a magnet for celebrities of Parisian high society; writers, variety artistes, actors, dancers, painters, composers, politicians and athletes all flocked there to be "immortalized". Validated by its portfolio of prestigious figures including Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau, the Begum and Marcel Cerdan, the Studio used society columns in the press and regularly updated files to seek out a diverse clientele.
To be photographed by Harcourt ensured you entered a pantheon not unlike that of Félix Nadar a century earlier.
"In France, you are not an actor unless you have been photographed by Studio Harcourt," wrote Roland Barthes in 1957. The Harcourt signature helped give every portrait a mythological dimension.

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