Eli Lotar, Beyond the Slaughterhouses

Eli Lotar, Aux Abattoirs de La Villette [At La Villette’s Slaughterhouses], 1929, coll. Metropolitan Museum, NYC

For most people, the name Eli Lotar [.pdf] first evokes images like this photo of calves’ feet (and a close-up shot of the same subject), shot at La Villette’s slaughterhouses [.pdf] in 1929. The reason behind this probably is the true documental dimension of his reportage, plus its Surrealist-inflected execution: in one of the pictures, it is Pierre Prévert, the poet’s brother, who is looking at a pile of offal on the ground, the series being commissioned by Documents, George Bataille’s journal, to illustrate the entry “Slaughterhouse” in the “Dictionary” section.