Kunang Helmi, Contributor, Paris
French photo critic Pierre Borhan remarked that photographer Willy Maywald was a fast worker.
Besides this, the photographer, who was born in 1907, also said, ""I do everything subconsciously!"" Maywald did not appreciate attempts at complicated effects and style, choosing to let his subjects speak for themselves.
The German-born photographer was part of that cosmopolitan, yet bohemian Parisian scene of artists and writers that congregated around Montparnasse in the 1930s.
His black-and-white photography captured many varied aspects of French life before and after WW II -- valuable documents of life in the French metropolis. He died in Paris in May 1985.
Photo fans still have time to visit the first comprehensive retrospective of Willy Maywald's work at Muse Carnavalet in Paris and to procure the catalog.
As the museum is dedicated to the history of Paris, it is appropriate that the 300 black-and-white prints taken in the French capital ranging from 1931 until 1955 chosen by curator Jutta Niemann are on show here until the end of September.
Niemann, a member of the Willy Maywald association, met him in 1962 when she first came to Paris from Germany as a young adult:""My first and lasting impression of him was, above all, his elegance and simplicity, and the way he listened to everybody.""
Maywald came to live in Paris in 1932, after a first, very brief visit in 1931. In that year he was able to take photos of the Colonial Exhibition in the metropole, besides other more usual subjects.
Since Maywald undertook his studies in photography in Berlin, after studying decorative arts in Cologne and Crefeld, it was only natural that he should want to visit that other capital of European culture, Paris.
Here, he became the assistant of Russian photographer Harry Meerson and learnt the basics of practicing photography as a living.
The young photographer frequented the bars and restaurants of Montparnasse, favoring Cafe du Dome where he met follow artists Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, Leonor Fini, Hans Hartung and Arpad Szenes, among many others.
From 1933 onward he also photographed expressionist dancers such as Peruvian Helba Huara, Japanese Toshi Komori and Indian Indra.
In 1934 he opened his own studio and the next year he held his first exhibition together with Dora Maar, who was later to become a companion of Picasso and Pierre Boucher.
Fashion, portraits and reportage
In 1936 he briefly met couturier Christian Dior with whom he would work together intensely after the war. Maywald documented the construction of Chaillot Palace, a complex of museums at Trocadero, and continued to show his photos of artists such as Otto Freundlich in his atelier.
However the political situation in Europe was becoming more dangerous, so in 1938 Maywald decided to visit his parents in Cleve where he was shocked to find his father arrested because of his liberal views and his sympathy for Jews. He was never to see his parents again.
Back in Paris he began photographing fashion in earnest with a reportage on couturier Rober Piguet during which he again met Christian Dior. Maywald also undertook a vast series of portraits of titled Bohemians in Montparnasse and his work on gardens and fashion began to be published in the magazines Verve and Vogue, among others.
His mounting success with work on scientists such as Frederic Joliot-Curie was tempered by his arrest in 1939 where he was interned in August as an ""undesirable foreigner"" in France in a camp near Blois.
The following years were hard for the German photographer who managed to escape to the free zone in France and then to Switzerland in 1942 with a Jewish friend, Charlotte Hockenheimer.
After being imprisoned in various camps for foreigners in Switzerland, he was allowed to began work again in 1943 and was engaged on a freelance basis on theater and cinema for various publications in Zurich, Ascona, Berne and Basel.
However, Maywald was still interested in Paris and was able to return in August 1946 when he began to work in earnest again, especially for Christian Dior who opened his own house of couture in 1947. Maywald was assisted by the young Swiss photographer Sabine Weiss.
Maywald continued to work for other fashion designers like Jacques Heim, Jacques Fath and others, despite being Christian Dior's exclusive photographer.
He also continued taking portraits of painters like Picasso, Matisse, Miro, Georges Braque and Chagall. Furthermore, his work included architecture and interiors and he received friends and personalities in his studio.
Later on, Maywald made several short films, but his work in fashion, portraits and reportage were his mainstay. He continued to work in the 1960s and 1970s, while also organizing shows of sculpture, painting and jewelry created by friends.
It was only in 1981 that his work was first shown in the United States and that Jutta Niemann began to show his photography there. In 1985, just before his death, the German version of his illustrated autobiography Die Splitter des Spiegels (Schirmer/Mosel, Munich) was published.
In 1986 Maywald's fashion photography was exhibited at Musee Galliera in Paris and his portraits of artists at the Goethe Institute, Paris.
The most recent show of his work in Paris is the current exhibition, Willy Maywald -- Le Paris de la creation, photographies 1931-1955, at Musee Carnavalet.
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