Montage

Maurice Tabard

1929 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

A pair of eyes—almost hidden—peer askance from within this abstract composition. Snipped, perhaps, from a fashion picture, they seem to survey unfamiliar terrain. Maurice Tabard made magazine ads and society portraits to fund his avant-garde output, but rarely did the commercial and experimental sides of his practice intersect. Here, he sliced and recycled extant negatives, montaging them into an austere axial configuration. Although Tabard arranged image components after the fact, he admired the more spontaneous work of street photographers, marveling at their ability to achieve—in an instant—the balance and proportion he so carefully composed. His tendency to parse their pictures with a pencil and compass amused the celebrated photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, who referred to him fondly as "our geometer."

Artist

Maurice Tabard

Date

1929

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987