Costumes de farandoleuses, vues de dos (costumes of farandole dancers, seen from behind)

In November 1938, Georges Henri Rivière, conservator of the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, and his scientific team of the time (Marcel Maget, Guy Pison and André Varagnac) carried out a prospection mission in and around Arles. Its aim was to organize the French section that would be dedicated to tourism and regionalism at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The exhibition was to pave the way for a museum dedicated to the farandole, a traditional Provençal dance, in Barbentane. The investigators’ goal was to retrace both the economic evolution and the traditions that were alive in French villages. This ethnographic mission would select representative local objects and study the context in which they were used, the techniques they apply, and the people and environment that produced them.

The task fell to Marcel Maget to examine the figures of the farandole and the dress in Arles, as illustrated in this photo. The ethnologist had the farandole dancers pose with their backs to the camera so as to fully appreciate the variety of skirts, mantillas and headgear that they presented.

During this brief assignment, the place set aside for drawing and photography in an ethnographic investigation was confirmed and clarified, while at the same time, an investigative method was put in place that was later proved and perfected over the course of the museum’s many field assignments in the years to come.