Céline Laguarde

In an article Chronique aixoise in the Marseilles publication La Vedette, published on 19 March 1898, she wrote ‘We applauded successively and no less warmly La Marche à l'étoile and L'Enfant prodigue from Frazerolle's score; the charming organ of Mlle Laguarde improvised as conductor, the supple, vibrant voice of an improvised mezzo-soprano'.

Laguarde soon became a pupil of Robert Demachy, with whom she shared a mastery of the gomme bichromatée technique of making photographic prints without using silver halides.

In 1901 her work was accepted for display at the Salon du Photo-club de Paris, the annual exhibition organised by the leading French photographic association.

[4] Laguarde's works Stella, Étude en brun, Pierrette were printed alongside those of Constant Puyo, Robert Demachy and Maurice Bucquet, the greatest names in pictorialism, in the prestigious edition of L'Épreuve photographique.

[6] On 28 January 1907, the minister of public education and fine arts issued a decree awarding her the title of Ordre des Palmes académiques[10] as a painter in Paris.

Her photographic activity seems to have diminished after the First World War, although she did support her entomologist husband's scientific work with microphotographs taken at their villa La Luciole, near Aix.

As a result, the Musée d'Orsay is showing Céline Laguarde (1873-1961) Photographe an exhibition devoted to 140 of her works, running from 24 September 2024 to 12 January 2025.