The Substance of a Venetian Dream is the first ever European museum exhibition devoted to the photographer Adolphe de Meyer (1868–1946). This follows the remarkable discovery in 2019 in the municipal library of Tours: a series of 75 photographs documenting his life and photographic work in Venice. This collection is being displayed in its entirety for the first time, and offers an exceptional glimpse into his personal and artistic world.
- Adolphe de Meyer – The Substance of a Venetian Dream
- Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König
- Text by Camille Mona Paysant
- Hardcover
- 22 × 1,5 × 17 cm
- 130 pages
- English and French
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Adolphe de Meyer was born in Paris in 1868 and enjoyed a fascinating and ground-breaking career in both Europe and the United States. Historians recognise him today principally as a pictorialist photographer (a movement that approached photography as an art form), as a virtuoso portraitist, and above all as a fashion photographer. He was one of the first to elevate fashion photography to artistic heights, creating elegant images for the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar. It is less well known that he was also an interior decorator, designer, art collector, journalist and writer. He turned his whole life into a work of art, in which photography, clothing, interiors and stagings expressed a coherent artistic vision: that of a man continuously reinventing himself and his surroundings.
