Born in 1879, Laure Albin Guillot is remarkable for her longevity and the variety of her work. Married to a scientist, she invented the term “micrography” in the 1920s, referring to her photographs made with a microscope. Winner of the golden medal during a contest organized by the “Revue française de photographie”, she set up many personal exhibitions, starting in 1925 at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts. From that moment she became famous, publishing her works in the reviews “Arts et métiers graphiques” and “Vu”. During the 1930s she focused on portraits and nudes, working successfully for the worlds of advertisement and fashion but also as a street photographer. Close to artists, musicians and writers, she worked on many illustrations for off-prints such as Narcissus by Paul Valéry (1936), The Songs of Bilitis by Pierre Louÿs (1937) or Préludes by Debussy (1948). She also argued for the recognition of photography as an art when working as director of the photographic archives of the Direction générale des Beaux-Arts (forerunner of the Ministry of Culture). Therefore, she initiated a national film archive (Cinémathèque nationale) at the Palais de Chaillot, also considering the creation of a museum of photography. When Laure Albin Guillot died in 1962, her work counted over 50,000 photographs acquired by the Roger-Viollet agency.
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