Since its first exhibit, Christer Strömholm’s Les Amies de Place Blanche has become one of the photographer’s most acclaimed works. In this project the Swedish artist captured the trans community. These attractive, interesting girls found their gender after birth and demonstrated their freedom and sensuality.
Strömholm, also known as Christer Christian, made it his life’s work to portray Parisian images full of emotional existentialism. After studying at France’s Academy of Arts, driven by the ideas of Sartre, Camus, and company, he made photography projects and series around the world.
Paris, 1963. Light breaks into a room from a balcony window. A woman is standing, looking out into the distance. Her gaze tells of a memory or joke she heard as she posed. Silence. Then a click captures a moment of French sensuality forever. (Fiction)
Sensual, sensitive, intimate, and full of energy, Les Amies de Place Blanche is a series of images that reflect the photographer’s experience of his time in Paris during the fifties and sixties. The friendships he made with his models are part of the story the project tells. It captures the casual ease of the after-hours side of the City of Lights.
Christer Christian took pictures of these scenes with his Leica camera and used a black and white aesthetic to provide his images with impeccable luminosity.
The photographer did not have time for hesitation. Like an experienced sniper, his finger was as skilled as his gaze. The world offers us no second chances; a portrait is waiting to be taken by whoever is bold enough to capture it.
Sensuality sees no gender. Whether male or female, beauty surpasses stereotypes, appearing on the faces of people watching the sunrise or looking out into darkness. Not every French Girl has large breasts, round hips, fits into the constructed gender roles, or was born female. But they all share a unique way of inciting desire in their beholders. Christer Christian captures the femininity and sensuality that they have mastered throughout time.
To see more of Christer Stromhölm’s photography click here.
Translated by María Suárez
