Background
Pierre Jahan was born on September 9, 1909, in Amboise, Centre, France. He made his first photos in 1915 with his sister's Brownie Kodak camera.
artist illustrator Photographer
Pierre Jahan was born on September 9, 1909, in Amboise, Centre, France. He made his first photos in 1915 with his sister's Brownie Kodak camera.
Pierre Jahan received his primary and secondary education in Amboise. In 1993 he entered the typographic and advertising studio of Raymond Gid in Paris where he learned layout, composition, and typography.
After participating in several amateur exhibitions, Pierre Jahan came to Paris during the winter of 1932-1933. Two meetings will be decisive to definitively convince Pierre Jahan to become professional. Recommended by a friend, Pierre Jahan met the illustrator Raymond Gid, then head of a small advertising agency. Raymond Gid gave Pierre Jahan his first professional commission on behalf of a painting brand: in 1933, Pierre Jahan made photos of the workers repainting the Eiffel Tower. The second capital meeting was with the great photographer Emmanuel Sougez. Then, the director of the photographic service of the magazine L'Illustration, Emmanuel Sougez encouraged Pierre Jahan to make photography his profession. In 1936, Pierre Jahan joined Emmanuel Sougez in the adventure of the Rectangle, "group of notorious practitioners, organized to ensure, along with first-rate productions, the defense, and dissemination of photography."
In 1934, Pierre Jahan's photographs include the pages of Plaisir de France, of which he will be one of the main collaborators until the end of the review in 1974. At the same time, he began to exhibit with Ergy Landau, Laure Albin Guillot, François Kollar, André Rogi, Cartier-Bresson Henri, Man Ray. After the experience of the Rectangle, Pierre Jahan joined the Group XV in 1950 alongside including Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Rene-Jacques. He was then called "illustrator " which implied a close relationship to the text, the book, the command, and a certain modesty.
Innumerable are the works, magazines, and supports to which Pierre Jahan has contributed: tourist and architectural routes, industrial reports, advertising campaigns.
Jean Cocteau, Serge Reggiani, Jean Marais
1941Georges Braque
1944Le Trottoir Sous La Pluie
1933The Eiffel tower, Paris
1945Aimable Pendu
1943Le serpent et la pomme
1940Agent de la circulation au Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris
1951Hand with five eyes
1947Jean Cocteau à la galerie Morihien, Paris
1947La mort des sculptures, Paris
1942Paris, le Pont des Arts
1974Mode, Place de la Concorde
1945Métier à tisser à mains : Navette entre les fils de chaîne
19461955 s'en va...que 1956 vous soit propice
1956Chez le peintre Heraut
1947Ohne Titel (Surrealist study)
1950Gauge
1939Picasso à Paris en 1944
1944Colette
1941Braque et Paulhan
1943Georges Auric compositeur vers 1945
1945Les Frères Jacques
1950Dolls
1942Francis Poulenc
1945Léo Ferré
1950Marlène Dietrich à Paris en 1944
1944La mort et les statues
1945Fiacre au Bois de Boulogne
1938Buste Lola Prussac
1935Enseigne lumineuse du "Caveau du Chat noir" 18e arrondissement
1939Rue de nuit
1935Pierre Jahan's major works are as much in the register of a naturally direct and radiant photograph as in the strangeness of a surreal and fantastic vein, or in the recreational fantasies that Pierre Jahan's rebellious spirit applied, with great freedom of expression. Ideas and style, to book covers and advertising studies, his essential activity from 1945 to 1960.
Quotations: "I have always been fascinated by play of light and fate. Like everything which lies in the dark, human beings and things start a kind of drift similar to dreaming, a dream or a nightmare, which, from ecstasy to fear, opens the door to this fourth dimension, in which, maybe without really believing in it, I always lived. It is all this that undoubtedly drove me to photography."
Pierre Jahan was a member of such French associations of photographers as Rectangle and Le Groupe des XV.
Pierre Jahan's long career reflects an independent and even epicurean behavior, and a relentless curiosity to approach, with ingenuousness and humor, all the opportunities to produce images.
There is no information on whether Pierre Jahan was ever married or had any children.