Saint Germain des Pres

by Ed V.D. Elsken

This picture was torn from a photo album by Ed. v.d. Elsken when he gave it as a gift to Gerd Sander. The work is unique in it "condition" and stands as a testimony to the fact that artworks play a very different role for artists than they do for collectors. /// This portrait belongs to the photo series "Love in Saint German des Prés", which Ed van der Elsken published as a book in 1956. This unusual illustrated book, which is being published in many countries at the same time, is not one of the many photo books in which Parisian air, Parisian light and Parisian life were captured with the camera in random snapshots. The famous Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken succeeded in letting his lens follow a pair of lovers inconspicuously for months in desolate, bitter poverty in St. Germain des Prés, the lackluster existentialist quarter on the left bank of the Seine , get to know and lose again. The result is a true, hard, but also tender, love story that has been copied from life in pictures, which is supplemented by short texts staccato-like. (Excerpt from the blurb of the volume).