Claude Tolmer (1922-1991) began working as a graphic designer in Paris in the early 1930s. He was the fourth generation of the prestigious printing house Maison Tolmer, renowned for its superb graphics and luxurious publications and packaging. The firm produced an eclectic assortment of products which included everything from elegant boxes to advertising posters and publicity booklets, all exquisitely conceived. In 1930 Alfred Tolmer, Claude’s father, wrote and published a book entitled “Mise en Page: the Theory and Practice of Layout”. As a primer on modern graphic design, this book deftly juxtaposed photography, typography and illustration, every page a breathtaking work of art. It was an inspirational publication and treasured by graphic designers and art directors for its fresh design concepts and lavishly executed illustrations. It was in this milieu that Claude Tolmer, who trained as a painter with Andre Lhote, experimented with a variety of photographic techniques including photogram, photomontage, composite printing, and cliché-verre. Some of Claude’s earliest design photographs were reproduced on the pages of “Mise en Page”. He was clearly enraptured with the art form and often used it to create dark and dramatic images that convey an aura of mystery. He contrasted the unexpected, constructed cubist compositions and produced trompe l’oeil images using common objects. The following quote from “Mise en Page” describes much of Claude’s early production: “Photography gives concrete form to the subtlest thoughts. It has the gift of imparting to the dullest, most mechanical and impersonal things the sensitiveness and poetry which admits them into our dreams.”

In 1946 Paul Himmel established a career in New York as a photographer for advertising, fashion and mass market magazines. He rose to the pinnacle of his field working for slick publications like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar-- in fact he was one of the rare exceptions permitted to work for both. As an acolyte of Alexey Brodovitch, his work embodied the influence and inspiration that the legendary art director imparted to artists and photographers. Himmel’s personal artwork was mostly experimental and prescient. He was continuously enmeshed in the photographic process using his self-invented technical wizardry to make vivid images that were unlike anything seen before. In the late 1960s he produced his last body of work, solarized super-saturated color images, some new, and some printed from earlier negatives. He reinvigorated his pictures from the fifties by endowing them with bold colors that would make them pop off the page. These images, possessing a pop art quality, reflect the psychedelic visuals that were current at the time. He applied his newly discovered technique commercially in a series of portraits taken for Fortune magazine, and his advertising campaign for a pharmaceutical company received an award for excellence. This aspect of the photographer’s oeuvre has been secreted away in the artists archive, and has only come to light in the last decade. They were most recently included in a 2005 exhibition at the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, “Summer of Love, Art of the Psychedelic Era” and are reproduced in a retrospective monograph “Paul Himmel Photographs” published by Assouline.