A Day with Picasso
by Billy Klüver
Buy on AmazonIn 1978, while collecting documentary photographs of the artists' community in Montparnasse from the first decades of the century, Billy Kluver discovered that some previously unassociated photographs appeared to be related. The photographs, showing Picasso, Max Jacob, Moise Kisling, Modigliani, and others at the Cafe de la Rotonde and on Boulevard du Montparnasse, all seemed to have been taken on the same day. But the identity of the photographer and the occasion being recorded remained a mystery. Investigation eventually allowed him to identify the photographer as Jean Cocteau and to determine the day that Cocteau had taken the photographs: August 12, 1916.…
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"This is definitely a book by a kindred spirit. I first heard about it from the writer Lydia Davis, who is a friend of mine. We knew very little about these photographs – the circumstances, how many there were, who took them, you name it – until Billy Klüver set for himself this project of trying to figure it all out. He did a forensic investigation of the photographs and discovered that they were taken by Jean Cocteau of his friends Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani et cetera. It’s a true detective story about photography. It’s an obvious precursor to what I’ve been trying to do. It’s also a great book in its own right. Unfortunately, Klüver died just a couple of years before I started working on my own book. I would have loved to talk to him."
Photography and Reality · fivebooks.com