CHRISTER STRÖMHOLM | NANA KISSING A MAN, PLACE BLANCHE, PARIS

Christer Strömholm, Post Scriptum, Max Ström 2012, p. 67, illustrated

In 1959, Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm moved to Paris and settled near Place Blanche. The neighborhood’s red-light district was home to many transsexuals who became his close friends and the subject of his series Les amies de Place Blanche.  He stayed in the same hotels that they called home, adopted their schedule, and observed them through the lens of his Leica as they dressed and did their makeup before going out to the street each evening. His images offer intimate portraits of individuals – Soraya at Hôtel Pierrots, Carla/Wanda fixing her hair, Nana being kissed by a man – by shooting in ambient light and carefully framing his close-up compositions. ‘The only thing they demanded was to have the right to be themselves. . .to have the right to live their own lives, to be responsible, to be at ease with themselves,’ wrote the photographer when he published a book of the series in 1983. It is believed that the photographs offered here are the first prints from Les amies de Place Blanche to be offered at auction in the United States.

At the time of this writing, it is believed that no other signed print of this image is extant.