Roger Parry

Roger Parry’s best photographs from the late 1920s and early 1930s explore the tenuous relationship between dream and reality. Dramatically-lit and noirish in setting, the characteristics of the present still life invite many questions surrounding its context. Is the standing figure sinister or benevolent? Is he the murderer or innocent bystander? Is there poison in the glass beakers? Is the woman, lying face-down with outstretched arm, depicted in homage to Jacques-Louis David’s 18^th century masterpiece La Mort de Marat? It is up to the viewer to construct the truth of this scene.

Parry met photographer Maurice Tabard in 1928 and became his darkroom assistant and collaborator for several years. Like Tabard, Parry's adventurous photographic practice encompassed a wide variety of techniques beyond still life, including photomontage, photogram, and solarization. His photographs were featured in two of the earliest shows at the Julien Levy Gallery, Surréalisme and Modern European Photographers. Parry was a staff photographer for the progressive Arts et Métiers Graphiques photographic annual and worked for publishing house Gallimard. André Malraux commissioned Parry and artist Fabien Loris to illustrate Banalités, a book of poems by Léon-Paul Fargue reissued by Gallimard in 1930. Like the photograph offered here, the 16 images in Banalités are imbued with dark psychological undertones.