Thérese Le Prat

Thérèse Le Prat [born Cahen] (19 March 1895, Pantin, France — 6 March 1966, Neuilly sur Seine) was a renowned photographer who worked on Cambodia, Tonkin and Annam (Vietnam) during several decades.

When she divorced French publisher Guillaume Le Prat in the early 1930s, he offered her a Rolleiflex camera and, thanks to her dawning talent and then fact she was employed by the Compagnie des Messageries maritimes as a commercial photographer on their route to Madagascar, Asia and Oceania. In Hanoi and Cambodia, she met and befriended Gilberte de Coral-Rémusat, for whom she illustrated several publications.

On 24 May, 1939, Le Prat joined Gilberte de Coral-Rémusat and Odette Monod in Paris for the conference Photographs from India, Indochina and Oceania [source: Le Temps/​BNF].

Thérèse Le Prat had another strong connection with Cambodia: her brother Gilbert Cahen, a French Navy engineer married to then-budding photographer Denise Colomb, was based in Saigon (Ho-Chi-Minhville). Visiting Angkor several times, she got close through Coral-Rémusat to Khmer art historian Philippe Stern, whom she finally married after World War II, the couple publishing later two book together, Le Petit python explorateur (Paris, Arts et métiers graphiques, 1953) and En votre gravité, Visages (Paris, Vilo, 1966). 

After 1947, she specialized in elaborate portraits of French major artists, dancers, writers, actors and actresses, and becoming a sought-after theater stage photographer. She always stayed far from the idyllic, propagandist vision of a colonial ​“Orientalism”, as reflected in her 1940 first solo exhibitions, Tropiques Tristes [literally Sad Tropics], a title that probably inspired anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss to call one of of his major essay Tristes Tropiques (Paris, Plon, 1955) — the title was left in French for John Russell’s 1961 English translation, after an attempt to the title A World in the Wane.

In 1992, her archives containing some 18 000 negatives, 5 000 original prints, 15 000 contacts, and personal notes, was donated to Musée du Jeu de Paume, Paris. In 2015, a collection of 140 silver prints capturing mostly Khmer temples (Bayon, Phum Prasat, Angkor Thom…) and daily life in Tonkin and Annam, was auctioned and sold at Galerie Drouot, Paris.

1) Portrait of Vietnamese leader Ho-Chi-Minh in 1945, by Thérese Le Prat [source: Vietnam Online]. 2) Actress Maria Casarès as ​“The Destiny” in Jean Cocteau’s movie Orpheus, 1951, by Thérese Le Prat [source: MPP-POP].

1) Portrait of Vietnamese leader Ho-Chi-Minh in 1945, by Thérese Le Prat [source: Vietnam Online]. 2) Actress Maria Casarès as ​“The Destiny” in Jean Cocteau’s movie Orpheus, 1951, by Thérese Le Prat [source: MPP-POP].

Major Exhibitions

• 1940 — Tropiques tristes, Paris, Grand Palais.
• 1950 — Visages d’acteurs, Paris, galerie Chez Loize. 
• 1952 — Autres visages d’acteurs, Paris, librairie Bonaparte. 
• 1953 — Le Petit python explorateur, Paris, librairie Bonaparte. 
• 1953 — Salon national de la photographie, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale (group exhibition). 
• 1955 — Masques et destins, Paris, librairie Bonaparte.
• 1956 — Gens d’images, Paris, galerie d’Orsay (group exhibition).
• 1957 — 2^e biennale de la photographie, Nice (group exhibition).
• 1959 — Le Masque et l’humain, Paris, musée des Arts décoratifs.
• 1961 — Salon national de la photographie, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale (group exhibition).
• 1962 — Un seul visage en ses métamorphoses, Paris, musée des Arts décoratifs.
• 1976 — Thérèse Le Prat, Photographies, Tunis, Ambassade de France en Tunisie.
• 1981 — Hommage à Thérèse Le Prat, Bièvres, musée français de la Photographie.
• 1994 — Spectacles, Paris, hôtel de Sully (group exhibition).
• 1995 — Thérèse Le Prat, Paris, hôtel de Sully.
• 2022 – 2023: Artistes-Voyageuses, l’appel des lointains 1880 – 1944, Évian, Palais Lumière (group exhibition).