Photo Annuaire, 1930 – Copy from a French Photo Dealer

Pub­lished in 1930, the Pho­to Annu­aire served as an annu­al ref­er­ence work for the French pho­to­graph­ic indus­try, com­bin­ing tech­ni­cal arti­cles, reports on new prod­ucts, trade direc­to­ries, com­mer­cial adver­tise­ments, prac­ti­cal ref­er­ence infor­ma­tion, and blank sec­tions for per­son­al cal­en­dars and address records in a sin­gle vol­ume. This copy is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy because it belonged to the Pho­to-Comp­toir A. Bisey of Mul­house, as evi­denced by the own­er’s stamp and con­tem­po­rary hand­writ­ten notes record­ing sup­pli­ers and busi­ness con­tacts. Numer­ous marked pages through­out the vol­ume show that it was active­ly used as a pro­fes­sion­al ref­er­ence book. Cov­er­ing many aspects of pho­tog­ra­phy, the Pho­to Annu­aire also fea­tures stere­oscopy promi­nent­ly through­out its pages, with both illus­trat­ed adver­tise­ments and reports pre­sent­ing the lat­est tech­ni­cal devel­op­ments. Fea­tured are stereo­scop­ic cam­eras, hand stere­o­scopes, chain stere­o­scopes, stereo­scop­ic pro­jec­tors, view­ers, and acces­sories by man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Gau­mont, Mat­tey, Leroy, and A. Plocq, togeth­er with prod­ucts includ­ing the Veras­cope, Homéo­scope, Stéréro­drome, Planox, and Apés­cope. As a work­ing copy from the library of a pro­fes­sion­al pho­to­graph­ic deal­er, this vol­ume pro­vides valu­able insight into the pho­to­graph­ic trade and the con­tin­u­ing devel­op­ment of stere­oscopy dur­ing the inter­war period.