Photographs of Joyce Mansour

Joyce Mansour, Nanos Valaoritis, and Ted Joans at a Surrealist meeting at a gallery (with a painting by Wifredo Lam in the back), Paris, 1975.

Ted Joans, Joyce Mansour, and Nanos Valaoritis (with Alain Jouffroy in the mirror) at Café La Promenade de Venus, Paris, 1975.

Joyce Mansour at her home in Paris, 1977. Reflecting on this encounter, Kalter writes:

Ted Joans introduced me to Joyce Mansour in 1975. In 1977, we went to her impressive apartment in Paris in the 16th arrondissement, filled with artworks from Papua New Guinea and surrealist paintings by artists like Wifredo Lam. At the time she was preparing a book of poems for the publisher Le Soleil Noir, called Faire signe au machiniste. The cover and interior illustrations were to be by Jorge Camacho, but she needed a portrait of herself for this publication. From all the contact sheets that we looked at after I had photographed her, one was chosen for the book. She later dedicated the book to me with a very special annotation: “Avec l’amitié noire et blanche,” meaning “with the black and white friendship,” referring of course to the black and white photographs I took of her.