The invention of chic

"The American photojournalist Therese Bonney was one of many brilliant young foreigners drawn to the bright lights of Paris in the 1920s. There she founded the Bonney Service, the first American illustrated press service in Europe. Its specialty - her passion - was modern French design and architecture." "This was an exciting time: Art Deco, still at its height, was increasingly being challenged by the more austere aesthetics of modernism. Bonney photographed architecture, interiors, salon installations and international expositions. She was dazzlingly well-connected, and her captions read like a roll-call of Deco and Moderne: Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand, Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier. She also recorded the changing face of Paris as the city embraced the modernist aesthetic, turning her lens on shop fronts and window displays, advertising and graphic arts, theatres, restaurants, nightclubs and bars." "Based on Bonney's amazing and little-known archive, this book comprehensively documents the modern movement in Paris between the wars. Therese Bonney is usually remembered for her work as a war photographer; in The Invention of Chic, Lisa Schlansker Kolosek reveals an earlier episode in the life of this extraordinary woman, an influential player at a key moment in the history of twentieth-century design."--BOOK JACKET.