“I take photos to amuse myself”
– Georges Thiry
Georges Thiry (1906 – 19940 took many pictures in his native Belgium. From 1935 to 1975, he produced 40,000 negatives, almost as many contact sheets and a number of prints. His focus was on artist, chiefly Surrealists – René Magritte, Paul Nougé, Christian Dotremont and Louis Scutenaire, Eugène Atget, Albert Brichaut, Brassai, Jane Evelyn Atwood and Christer Stromholm. Many more of his photographers focus on prostitues.
Thiry’s work has much in common with that of E.J. Bellocq and his ‘Storyville’ portraits. of sex workers in New Orleans. At their best, the work of both photographers is far removed from the pictures of desperate women offering themselves up for consumption to the male gaze. Taken in their homes, which was often also their places of work, these women appear to be in command of their sexuality. We see them less as fallen woman slinging to society’s lowest rung, and more as people possessed of integrity and character, a feeling more pronounced when Thiry’s work is seen over a series of images.
Via: Gallery Lumière des Roses and Museum of Photography in Charleroi
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