Images by Nadar and Man Ray Feature in Auction Celebrating 200 Years of Photography

A major collection of groundbreaking 19th- and 20th-century French photography, featuring works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nadar, and Man Ray, will be offered.

France is celebrating 200 years of photography, marking the pioneering work of French inventor Nicéphore Niépce, who captured View from the Window at Le Gras which is widely considered the oldest known photograph made with a camera in 1826–1827.

To celebrate France’s bicentennial of photography, Christie’s will present more than 350 photographs in the Roger Therond Collection: A French Passion. The works will be offered across three sales in Paris, France, on November 13 and 14, and online from November 6 to 17 to coincide with Paris Photo, the world’s largest international art fair dedicated to photography.

Roger Therond, a journalist who served as editor of Paris Match for half a century, spent decades building a collection that brings together major works from the history of French photography. While his work at the magazine focused on current events, collecting offered him a different perspective on the photographic medium, which he valued for its ability to reveal hidden worlds.

Therond’s collection includes works by some of the leading figures in 19th-century photography in France, including Auguste Belloc, Gustave Le Gray, Édouard Baldus, and Nadar. Therond also built an extensive collection of 20th-century photography, acquiring works by artists who helped shape the medium’s history. These included images by Man Ray (who became a French naturalized citizen), Dora Maar, Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, and Guy Bourdin — several of whom were friends of the Therond.

One work that held particular significance for Therond was Man Ray’s Le Baiser (The Kiss), estimated at $280,000–$392,000 (€250,000–350,000). Man Ray’s photograph depicts two sitters, including photographer Lee Miller on the left, but leaves their identities and relationship open to interpretation. Therond encouraged his children to look at the photograph more than once, considering the different possibilities it might suggest.

“A man and a woman? Two women? Two men wearing make-up? Let us not try to know,” Therond would say, according to a news release by Christie’s. “Instead, let us half-close our eyes and allow into our field of vision the black-clad Gypsy woman who emerges, beyond the photographer’s intention, a dancing silhouette whose skirt billows like a corolla. And where are we? In another world, the world of the strange, the world of the unknown.”

More information about Christie’s auction of the Roger Therond Collection: A French Passion can be found here.