Le Dôme in Pictures: 1931
While perusing the online photo collection of the French Ministry of Culture, I stumbled upon a real gem: A set of ten photos of Le Dôme café taken in the winter of 1931-32. The pictures provide a unique glimpse of the café as Henry Miller would have known it.
The photos were taken by the Séeberger brothers (Jules, Louis and Henri), who in the early 1900's began a long career of producing photographs for postcards, fashion and the press. Several collections of their work are available in book form.
Looking closely at the photos, they were clearly taken in the morning as there is a display of American breakfast cereal boxes on some of the tables, with brand names like Corn Flakes, Shredded Wheat, and Puffed Rice. The exterior shots give a sense of just how large the old café was—while the current Dôme café still occupies the pointed corner of the building, much of the area along its former side is now occupied by other shops and restaurants.
I'm not certain, but these photos seem likely to have been taken for producing a set of postcards which would be sold at the café. In any case, the French Ministry of Culture site informs us that the photo set was commissioned in September 1931 and delivered in March 1932, so there's about a 6 or 7 month window in which they could have been made. Miller arrived in Paris in 1930 and spent much of January and February 1932 in Dijon, teaching English at the Lycée Carnot.
You can see larger versions of these photos at the Ministry of Culture site — simply click any of the thumbnails below and then click the thumbnail on the resulting Ministry of Culture page to see the full size.
All photos in this post are credited to Séeberger (frères) and to Ministère de la Culture (France), Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine (archives photographiques) diffusion RMN.
Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Le Dôme, by Séeberger (frères)
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Very nice and interesting set of photos!
Great find, Kreg!
These are an excellent set and coming as they do at the end of what looks like shortly after dawn, they evoke the same ghostly ambiance that Eugene Atget achieved when he photographed Paris in the early hours. And it is strange in regarding them to also think that when Henry worked at the Tribune, it would only have been a short while before these very images that he viewed the tableaux that went into Tropic of Cancer.