Freund Indeed

Gisèle Freund, L'Oeil frontière : Paris 1933-1940
RMN, Paris, 2011

This exhibition catalogue from a show at the Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent contains mostly black and white images, which are very good and make the smaller colour selection from 1939 jump out. Freund had a brief flirtation with Kodakchrome. I wish it had been longer as the hues and saturation are great and give the subjects a jolt of contemporaneity, albeit with a slightly sickly pallor.

Myopic James Joyce

Brainiac Walter Benjamin

Smouldering Colette

Marcel Marceau Duchamp

Sideshow Jean Cocteau

Puffin' André Breton

Smokin' Jean-Paul Satre

Chintzy Virginia Woolf

Cheery Herbert Read and Anytime Peggy Guggenheim

Old Possum T.S.Eliot

Wild Man Thornton Wilder

Ars Longa Vita Sackville-West

Desk Jockey

Jean Prouvé
Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona, 2007

Architect and designer Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) created some wonderfully spare and elegant furniture for industrial clients and municipal commissions in his native France during the middle decades of the last century, a time when égalité and the aesthetics of the visual environment were still respected concepts. Particular favourites are his educational furniture for schools and colleges.

Prove it: dapper neckwear

Also of interest is this design for an open-worked steel panel (1946-52) used in Prouvé's and other architects' building designs. Possible inspiration for the interior of the TARDIS?