The magazine publishing company Condé Nast had a lasting impact on the visual culture of the 20th century, in particular through its investment in the photographic medium since the 1920s. As it became a multimedia, multinational conglomerate, its representations contributed to shaping collective views of beauty, taste, and class. This presentation will explore the history of Condé Nast through the prism of the development of its photographic studio established in Paris from 1921. Operated by French editors, émigrés artists and American administrators, the studio stood at the heart of complex transnational networks. Its success largely contributed to establishing Condé Nast’s stronghold on the publishing market as well as, ultimately, its brand.
There exists no archive for the studio per se. Inquiring into the first phase of its history (from 1921 until 1939, at the start of the Second World War) consequently entails resorting to a wide array of primary and secondary sources that document it indirectly; and pondering the archival gaps that still cloud, to this day, a large portion of the editorial and commercial work underlying the photographic field. Looking at (and handling) press articles and ads, business and notary records, correspondence and work memos, ephemera from private collections, photographic prints and their marginalia, memoirs, etc., prompts us to reflect on how we (re)construct our research objects. Ultimately, this research into Condé Nast’s Paris photo studio aims to shed some new light on the media circulations of capital, but of forms and ideas as well, by exploring multifarious sources that lead us to engage with interdisciplinary methods.