Left-of-centre French illustrated weekly launched on 21 March 1928 by Lucien Vogel. In its first year alone, it published 3, 324 photographs. Estimates of its peak circulation range from 300, 000 to 450, 000. In the 1930s Vu supported the French Popular Front and the Spanish Republic, and on 23 September 1936 published Robert Capa's celebrated Falling Soldier. Other contributors included James Abbe, Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Krull, Kertész, and Man Ray, and the writers Colette and Pierre Mac Orlan. Art director from 1933 to 1936 was Alexander Liberman, who transformed Vu's appearance with dynamic, Soviet-influenced photomontages. After he left, and Vogel sold the paper (1936), it lapsed into conservatism, and closed after France's defeat in 1940.
— Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Aubry, Y., ‘Magazines et photographie, 1928-1940’,
Zoom ,88 (1981). - Osman, C., and Phillips, S. S., ‘European Visions: Magazine Photography in Europe between the Wars’, in M. Fulton (ed.), The Eyes of Time: Photojournalism in America (1988)
