La chambre dans l’atelier. François Kollar et le travail des artisans (1931-1934)

Photographer François Kollar gained notoriety with the reportage La France travaille published by Horizons de France Publishing between 1931 and 1934. These images, today in the Forney library, are a document to write the history of the work. The article focuses on artisans in this reportage. It wonders to what extent these photographs constitute an archive of the craftsmen’s work. It first confronts them with our knowledge of the crafts of the 1930s, a socio-professional group that was organized itself in the interwar period and to which Kollar is close. Then, it analyses what Kollar shows about these workers, their work, its operations, gestures, postures and know-how, but also what he left off-camera.