Exhibition: Denise Colomb, beyond the portrait

The Salon des Artistes has barely closed its doors when the Wall House Territorial Museum opened its doors to a new exhibition on Saturday August 2. This one is dedicated to the artist Denise Colomb. More precisely, a retrospective of the work of this French photographer, whose talent and renown earned her an invitation to the Antilles by Aimé Césaire in 1948.
Last year, from September 20 to December 31, the Maison Saint-John Perse in Pointe-à-Pitre organized a major exhibition entitled "1948-1958-La photographe Denise Colomb à Pointe-à-Pitre : La ville, les gens, Sé nou mem" (The city, the people, Sé nou mem), which brought together a large number of photographs taken by the artist in Guadeloupe. These photographs had never before been on public display in Guadeloupe.

An expanded exhibition
In Saint-Barthélemy, the director of the Wall House Museum is proposing a broader vision of Denise Colomb's work. Some fifty photographs will be on show until September 6. These include photographs taken in Indochina in the 1930s and the West Indies in the late 1940s, as well as portraits from the 1950s, and photographs of Les Halles in Paris and the Ile de Sein (Brittany, Finistère).
Born Denise Loeb in Paris on April 1, 1902, the photographer lived an extraordinary life. She took her first portraits during a stay in Indochina (1935-1937), where she accompanied her husband, Gilbert Cohen, a marine engineer. He gave her her first camera. During the war (1939-1945), to escape the anti-Semitic roundups ordered by the Vichy government, her family took refuge in the Drôme under the assumed name of "Colomb". From 1947 onwards, Denise would use this name in her photography business. Her life and work were then punctuated by travel, from the West Indies to India and Israel. Through the intermediary of her brother Pierre Loeb, who owned an art gallery in Paris and introduced her to many artists, Denise Colomb undertook a series of portraits of Antonin Artaud, Nicolas de Staël, Picasso, Giacometti - the list goes on.
In 1991, Denise Colomb donated her work to the French State (52,000 negatives, 2,600 vintage prints and her personal documentation). She died on January 1, 2004 in Paris at the age of 101.
The exhibition at the Wall House Museum from August 2 to September 6 is organized in partnership with the Maison Saint-John Perse and the Médiathèque du patrimoine et de la photographie de Paris. The opening will take place on Saturday August 2 at 6.30pm at the territorial museum. It is open to all.