In parallel with his exhibition at Paris-Photo, dealer Bruno Tartarin will be showcasing in his parisien gallery, Photo Discovery - The Place, the work of a singular mid-twentieth-century artist who, until now, has been overlooked in art history.
A Breton born during the First World War, André le Manchec (1915-1987), discovered photography in the army during the Second World War, as part of a reconnaissance squadron alongside Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
His work as a photographer soon moved away from the rigid framework of military photography into the realm of visual experimentation.
It was in the French Agfa-Gevaert laboratory in Rueil-Malmaison in the 1970s that he invented a creative photographic technique that he called ‘Pictography’ aware that his invention deserved a name of its own. André Le Manchec's abstract coloured images are obtained from colourless chemicals, glues or varnishes, cast onto a glass plate and transposed onto Agfacolor paper using an enlarger.