This spectacular edition curates a collection of vintage photographs, postcards, posters, and photochromes. From the Paris World's Fair to the honey light of the Côte d'Azur, it's a glimpse into an era of rose-tinted optimism in France. It was an age of peace, prosperity, and progress after a series of bruising wars and turmoil within the French Republic, culminating in the Franco-Prussian War, which had ended in 1871. From the ruins of conflict, the Belle Époque brought joie de vivre flourish, a boom in art, design, industry, technology, gastronomy, education, travel, entertainment, and nightlife. Through some 800 vintage photographs, postcards, posters, and photochromes from the extensive archives of Marc Walter and Photovintagefrance, France 1900 from art publisher Taschen's best-selling vintage photographic collections series provides a precious record of France in all its turn-of-the-century glory. There are parasols and bustles, colourful dresses and hats, children in smocks, and men in silk top hats, steam tramps and sailing boats, fishermen with their nets in the shallows in front of a castle, steam trains bustling through the city and adverts for train tours, snowy mountain villages and alpine climbs up icy peaks, busy docksides and glamorous beach resorts and promenades, all arranged by region. With the photochrome technique used in many of the images restoring the past to vivid colour, we enjoy a bristling close, bittersweet, encounter with this hopeful age: the brave, stony splendour of the Mont Saint-Michel; the icy peaks of Chamonix; and the honey light of the Côte d'Azur. With an introduction, six essays, and detailed commentary by Sabine Arqué exploring the stories behind the pictures, this is an unrivalled portrait of a nation on the cusp of the century and of its poignant exuberance before the paroxysm of the First World War. While paying tribute to the precious Belle Époque, crushed by the traumas of history, it also celebrates the unwavering allure of La Belle France, its beauty, culture, traditions, and legendary romance. 25 x 34cm, 560 pages. New from Taschen, text in English, French and German.
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