Discover the erotic world of interwar Paris.
From the artists’ balls of Montparnasse to the cabarets, brothels and discreet bookshops of the French capital, City of Pleasure: Paris Between the Wars explores a city intoxicated by its own decadence. Historian Alexandre Dupouy brings its erotic culture into focus through photographs, illustrations and a wealth of period ephemera.
Step inside the extravagant world of the Folies-Bergère, discover the fetish fashions of rival lingerie houses Yva Richard and Diana Slip, and meet the photographers who recorded the era’s private pleasures. Alongside cabaret performers and costumed revellers are intimate amateur snapshots and the elaborate photographic fantasies of the Biederer brothers, whose identities Dupouy helped to uncover through his research.
Ball tickets, cabaret programmes, advertisements and lingerie catalogues sit alongside the photographs, revealing how pleasure was staged, dressed and sold. The book also explores gay and lesbian nightlife and the tensions between sexual freedom, commerce and censorship.
Uncensored and richly illustrated, this publication offers an absorbing journey through the erotic photography, fashion and nightlife of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.
About the author
Alexandre Dupouy is a historian, bookseller and collector specialising in erotic art and photography. A leading authority for over 30 years, he has written and contributed to numerous books in his native France. He owns the Parisian emporium Larmes d’Éros, open by appointment only — an Aladdin’s cave of earthly delights that is more museum than shop.
Featured story: The Biederer Brothers
Jacques and Charles Biederer were pioneering fetish photographers whose work features in City of Pleasure.
1 Review
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A richly illustrated look at interwar Paris
Alexandre Dupouy’s City of Pleasure: Paris Between the Wars is a beautifully produced hardback on 1920s and 1930s Paris, from the Folies-Bergère to the Biederer brothers’ fetish photography. It’s packed with period ephemera and plenty of bizarre and rude pictures. Readers who enjoyed Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin or Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 will find this a worthy and rather naughty companion.
