PARIS.- On October 29, the Boisgirard-Antonini auction house will offer a second sale of photographs from the newspaper L'Équipe photo collection. With the 2024 Paris Olympic Games exactly 1,000 days ahead, this sale will be devoted to the theme of the Olympic Games, with 200 selected photographs covering a century of sport. The sale will be preceded by two days of public exhibitions on 27 and 28 October, and enthusiasts will be able to bid on 29 October at Hôtel Drouot or online on
drouot.com.
This second edition, "A century of Olympic Games by the L'Équipe photo collection", will include 190 photos and 10 contact sheets, in single edition signed and stamped by L'Équipe in several printed formats. The photographers of L'Équipe have captured the most significant moments in the history of sport with the swimmer Johnny Weissmuller at the Paris Games in 1924, the high jump of Fosbury in Mexico City 1968, the perfect score of Nadia Comaneci in Montreal 1976, the records of Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt and the exploits of the collective sportsmen tricolore in Tokyo in 2021.
This selection is from the photo collection of L'Équipe, which contains over a century of images, making it one of the largest in the world with 12 million photos. Through these pictures, there is a real testimony of the history of sport and sometimes of the history of the World.
Maître Pierre-Dominique Antonini, Auctioneer of the sale, declared: "Last year's auction placed sports photojournalism among the artistic disciplines by taking its place in the photography market. I am delighted that we are organizing this second edition, which launches, in our own way, the countdown to the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.
I am particularly touched by this theme because offering at auction these exploits taken on the spot and immortalized through photography, of an event that brings together so many nations and emotions, will be, I am sure, a strong moment.
Maître Pierre-Dominique Antonini, Auctioneer of the sale, declared:"With this auction curated around a century of Olympic Games, presents itself a new opportunity to acquire unique treasures from the extraordinary photo collection of L'Équipe.
From the photo of the French delegation wearing the Gallic rooster for the first time in Antwerp, during the opening ceremony of the 1920 Games, to the image of a stadium in Tokyo lit in blue-white-red, last August, at the time of passing the baton to Paris 2024, it is a souvenir album that will be exhibited and then offered at auction. From Robert Legros and André Lecoq, pioneers of photography at L'Équipe, to our current special envoys, this sale will allow us to discover the work of our exceptional yesterday and today photographers, capable of documenting the history of sport and the world, while giving it an aesthetic and even artistic dimension.
This work is magnified thanks to unique art prints, small treasures of emotion and history made by Aurélie Guillou and Yonnel Leblanc, experts in the field of Initial Labo.