Casting Shadows: Women’s Work at the Projection Department of Maison de la Bonne Presse (1895-1920)

by Bart G. Moens

Contents

2. A Catholic Publishing Company Sees Light in Projection

3. The Gendered Organization of the Projection Department

Introduction

Embarking on a search for photographic lantern slides in francophone countries, one quickly encounters considerable quantities of slides from the French Catholic press organ Maison de la Bonne Presse.¹These lantern slides, marked by the publisher’s printed labels featuring neatly handwritten titles, stand out for their meticulous finishings, especially their vibrant colors. This essay highlights women’s contributions at Maison de la Bonne Presse, a key player in the European lantern industry from 1895 to the 1940s. It explores issues of gender, working conditions, and the quality of labor, and uncovers previous historical omissions. In doing so, this research contributes to feminist film history by showing that women’s work for the screen both predates and extends beyond film at the turn of the twentieth century.

Although lantern studies have gained increased attention over the years,²women’s various roles in that industry,³ together with what were considered less prestigious roles taken on by both men and women (mainly, technical and non-creative functions), remain largely underexplored.⁴What follows seeks to address this oversight by examining extant archival materials from the Augustinians of the Assumptions, the founders of Maison de la Bonne Presse, in their archives in Paris and Rome. Nonetheless, certain limitations encountered in the course of this archival research must be acknowledged. First, I was unable to access the archives of the Oblates of the Assumption—the women’s branch of the Assumptionists—who worked alongside the Augustinians. This limitation has shaped the available source base, which still necessarily privileges institutional narratives and foregrounds male leadership within the organization. Consequently, women’s agency and contributions might remain underrepresented, indicating the need for further research in this area. Second, while the paper archives of Catholic congregations are typically abundant, detailed, and well-organized, their audiovisual materials from the same period are often less thoroughly documented and preserved. Despite these constraints, I identified important sources that illuminate women’s contributions to Maison de la Bonne Presse and to the lantern industry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more broadly.

A Catholic Publishing Company Sees Light in Projection

Maison de la Bonne Presse was established as a Catholic press organ by the Augustinians of the Assumption in Paris, France, in 1889, and remains active today under the name Groupe Bayard.⁵ It established a “Service des projections” (projection department) in the fall of 1895, when the Catholic Church sought new appropriate tools for teaching the faith to quickly evolving modern societies. Starting in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the industrial production of photographic lantern slides, together with the development of stronger light sources and refined lens systems, greatly contributed to the more widespread use of the optical lantern—an improved version of the magic lantern. Within the Catholic Church, the use of the optical lantern was not undisputed. Yet, by the turn of the century, its usage for evangelism and religious education had become common practice, and a powerful visual instrument against secular and anti-clerical movements.⁶Unlike print media, which addressed individual readers, the optical lantern allowed the Church to reach larger and more diverse audiences, with lecturers presenting content in dynamic ways and interacting with the public in real time.

It was shortly before the first public screening of the Lumière cinematograph in 1895 that G.-Michel Coissac was appointed to organize the projection department of Maison de la Bonne Presse. In the following years, the company became an important producer and distributor of lantern material, promoting the use of the lantern alongside other Parisian companies such as E. Mazo and Radiguet & Massiot.⁷Maison de la Bonne Presse grew its slide catalogue to 12,000 slides by 1903, and produced about 1,000 slides daily by 1910.⁸By 1927, their catalogue featured nearly 30,000 slides across 800 sets, covering topics like religion, history, science, geography, arts, and entertainment.⁹Beginning in 1908, the projection department capitalized on in-house productions of so-called “life model slide” sets—sequential photographic representations of posing characters in staged contexts—and of films with religious themes.

Henri Perrin as the Roman prefect Barbarus, slide 19 of Sainte Dévote, a Christian martyr, 8.5 x 10 cm, Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1911. Private Collection.

With the 1906 appointment of Honoré Le Sablais—an Assumptionist priest active in Parisian Christian theater—as what we might now call creative director, Maison de la Bonne Presse committed itself to producing and co-producing narrative and fictional slides and films intended to counter the growing dominance of secular projection media. These slides and films had to meet both doctrinal and aesthetic requirements, and depict religious subjects with dignity, which explains why professional actors from the Parisian theatrical world were employed.¹⁰For example, one of the earliest and most ambitious projects from Maison de la Bonne Presse, titled La Passion de Notre-Seigneur Jésus Christ (1909), and produced for both the lantern and the cinematograph, featured male and female actors from the Odéon theater.¹¹In general, whereas some male actors, including Henri Perrin, have been identified, the female actors involved in these films and life model slides remain unknown. However, it is possible to hypothesize that the female actors Norma (affiliated with the Vaudeville), C. Dumoulin (affiliated with the Odéon), and Renée Sylvaire participated in these productions.

Undated postcard of Renée Sylvaire. Private Collection.

Around that time, these women (like Perrin) had appeared on stage at Le Sablais’s Christian theater, Le Bon Théâtre. Sylvaire had also performed at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique and the Théâtre des Arts, and, by 1908, when she was sixteen, acted in several Gaumont and Pathé films.¹² Yet, based solely on visual attributes and in the absence of other corroborating sources, it remains particularly challenging to draw definitive conclusions about the male and female actors involved in the productions of Maison de la Bonne Presse. Still, grounded in traditional Christian iconography and contemporary stage melodrama, the films and slides of Maison de la Bonne Presse—in their narratives and visual styles—strongly emphasized the centrality of women as a focal point of emotional display.¹³Women embodied virtue, emotional depth, and suffering, and their emotional expression and responses were central to the morality and other religious values that Christian stories meant to communicate on screen.¹⁴

The Gendered Organization of the Projection Department

Although primarily anonymous, actresses represent the most visible women who contributed to the slide and early film productions of Maison de la Bonne Presse. Nevertheless, behind the scenes, women undertook numerous other essential roles that remain largely unacknowledged. A photograph (below) showing workers leaving the premises of Maison de la Bonne Presse after a day’s work does not suggest that women were employed at the company, let alone in the projection department. Neither histories about the company and its projection department, nor publications about projection produced by the company itself, including the monthly magazine Le Fascinateur and their slide catalogues, discuss women’s involvement. The names referenced there predominantly highlight prominent male figures, such as Coissac and Le Sablais, along with several artists involved in the slide production.

Workers heading home from Maison de la Bonne Presse at 3 and 5 Rue Bayard, Paris, before 1914. Courtesy of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris.

Women were nonetheless crucial in the functioning of Maison de la Bonne Presse, in both the printing press, a traditionally male-dominated field, and the projection department.¹⁵From the early days of the newspaper Le Pèlerin, which the congregation had started two decades before establishing Maison de la Bonne Presse, Oblates of the Assumption—women associated to the religious family of the Augustinians—combined their religious duties with the practical apostolate of the press. There was also an economic dimension to this arrangement, as the nuns were not financially compensated for their work. From the 1880s, they ran branches, conceived as Christian workshops, that handled the composing, proofreading, and folding of the newspaper, and employed mainly young women who also performed domestic tasks such as cleaning and cooking.¹⁶Although largely unrecognized, their labor was essential to the daily operation of the publishing house.

Female workers at Maison de la Bonne Presse folding journals and magazines circa 1910. Courtesy of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris.

Around 1900, the entire company employed about four hundred men and four hundred women, both lay and religious, with roughly one-tenth of the women being Oblates.¹⁷Men and women worked in separate areas and were supervised by religious authorities.¹⁸ Later testimonies of employees confirm that the workspaces were strictly divided and that the closely regulated interaction between the sexes was extended during breaks and lunch time.¹⁹A lantern slide set from Maison de la Bonne Presse titled Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique. La Maison de la Bonne Presse released in 1912 tells us that the projection department was organized in similar ways. Its ninty-six photographic slides, paired with a written lecture, explain the company’s various departments and their operations prior to 1912.²⁰They reveal that fifty-six people were employed at the projection department, of which twenty-nine were women (described in the lecture as “jeunes filles”) and twenty-seven were men (described as “hommes”).²¹The projection department had its own administrative and technical unit, a photography section with darkrooms for the development of the pictures, and special laboratories for the enlargement and retouching of the photos, in which men were employed. Clearly defined roles, shaped by Christian doctrine, assigned women to lighter and detail-oriented tasks, such as quality control and finishing of the slides.

The arrival of oxygen cylinders for projection devices at Maison de la Bonne Presse, circa 1910. Courtesy of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris.

One of the earliest stages of women’s involvement at the projection department was the hand-coloring of photographic images.²²As was the case in the photography and film industries, it is generally recognized that the finishing of slides, especially the coloring, was done by women, whose work, performed in challenging conditions, was often undervalued.²³An English handbook on the lantern from 1888 states that:

Cheap colored photographs are done by girls, who are miserably paid, and who have no idea of real art and harmony of colors. The manner in which these girls are brought into the way of earning their livelihood is a study for a labor commission, sweating is not a word strong enough to describe the system under which cheap slides are painted—we should have said daubed.²⁴

While this passage expresses a valid critique of exploitative labor and harsh conditions of female colorists, it dismisses their work, ignoring how mass production and poor training shaped the results.

In France, the firm of Élisabeth Thuillier, later managed by her daughter Marie-Berthe, initially specialized in coloring lantern slides and stereoscopic images before transitioning to film coloring in the late 1890s.²⁵Such workshops employed hundreds of workers, primarily women, who were comparatively well-paid for their labor. The smaller studio of Maison de la Bonne Presse appears to have focused exclusively on the coloring of lantern slides; on the basis of the available sources, the working conditions cannot be ascertained.²⁶ Yet, it appears that the women received proper training. The quality of the coloring was a hallmark that set their slides apart from other producers and was repeatedly praised in the company’s catalogues and journals: “Our slides, colored in our workshops with an incomparable care and art, are a worldwide success. We ask you to compare the refinement and beauty of the colors with anything else on offer.”²⁷ However, the artists responsible for this painstaking work were neither highlighted or named, and remained anonymous in official records, publications, and catalogues.

By 1909, fourteen women, and, three years later, twenty “jeunes artistes” (young artists) worked under the supervision of the Oblates to meticulously paint the lantern slides.²⁸They provided the slides with vibrant colors, although the intention was to avoid excessive embellishment.²⁹The colorists worked side by side at retouching desks that featured a glass tabletop and a light source or mirror to illuminate the lantern slide from below.

Coloring studio at Maison de la Bonne Presse circa 1910. Courtesy of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris.

They encountered numerous challenges. On the one hand, the final visual effect would not be immediately apparent while they were painting, and the colors freshly applied on the glass plates often appeared differently when projected onto the screen. On the other, although colorists adhered to established guidelines, there were inevitable variations in coloring due to the individual nature of the work, which ultimately imparted a unique quality to each slide. For documentary images, photographers were ordered to observe the colors of the subjects, which would ensure that colorists would reproduce the chromatics as faithfully as possible.³⁰

Women’s contributions extended beyond coloring to the later stages of the production process of lantern slides. In the assembly studio, their work involved applying a cache and protective glass and then sealing the edges with black paper tape to secure the two glass plates and protect the edges. A photograph from around 1910 captures the activities of this particular workshop, with around six female employees working in between stacks of slides, labelling them, providing a handwritten number and title, and applying the sealing tape. Once completed, the slides were boxed, ready for rental or sale.

Assembly studio at Maison de la Bonne Presse circa 1910. Courtesy of the Archive of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Paris.

This and other photographs of the projection department’s studios must feature Oblates among the women, though it is not easy to recognize them as such. This is due to the French secularization laws of 1901, when the Oblates were officially forced to leave the publisher.³¹ However, they continued to be involved, shedding their religious habits in favor of dark civilian dress and adopting their family names once again, though it was common practice that their lay colleagues still referred to them as “Sœur” (sister).

Conclusion

A close examination of gendered labor divisions, social categories, and specialized tasks such as slide finishing uncovers the complexities and intricate dynamics of lantern studies and early cinema history. Further research is needed to uncover the roles of women in the production of (life model) slides and films of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both behind the scenes and in front of the camera, at Maison de la Bonne Press and other producers in France and abroad. The lack of recognition for women in lantern and early film industries reflects a broader pattern whereby historical accounts prioritize male figures in managerial positions and devalue work of lower visibility, frequently performed by women.³²As the case of Maison de la Bonne Presse demonstrates, film and media histories necessitate further critical reassessment and interrogation of (alternative) archival sources, which are often fragmentary and housed in specialized collections, whether private or public. It also illustrates that photographs can play a vital role in documenting women’s involvements, particularly when written or administrative records are silent, incomplete, and/or inaccessible. Examining a variety of complementary sources is essential to cast light on the shadows of early cinema and media history.

See also: “French Film Colorists”

This work was funded by FWO and F.R.S.-FNRS under the Excellence of Science project B-magic [number 30802346] and has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program [grant agreement No 948678 — SciFair]. The author wishes to express his sincere gratitude to Patrick Zago, archivist at the Parisian archive of the Congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption, for his invaluable support and assistance during archival research. Gratitude is also extended to Aurore Spiers and Kate Saccone for their insightful comments and meticulous corrections.

Notes

1
Countries with French-speaking regions and Catholic traditions, such as Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada, acquired these materials, as evidenced by their continued presence in local archives. Beyond these regions, however, Bonne Presse slides also found a market in the U.S., where they were distributed under the Devereaux View Company label.
2
In the past decade, several major research projects on the magic lantern have been conducted in countries such as the Netherlands, Australia, and Belgium: A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slide Heritage as Artefacts in the Common European History of Learning (2015–2018), https://a-million-pictures.wp.hum.uu.nl; Projecting Knowledge – The Magic Lantern as a Tool for Mediated Science Communication in the Netherlands, 1880–1940 (2018–2025), https://projectingknowledge.sites.uu.nl/; Heritage in the Limelight: The Magic Lantern in Australia and the World (2016–2019), https://soad.cass.anu.edu.au/research/heritage-limelight; B-magic: The Magic Lantern and Its Cultural Impact as a Visual Mass Medium in Belgium (1830–1940) (2018–2023), https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/projects/b-magic.
3
A scarce example of research on the role of women in magic lantern culture is: Nele Wynants, “Invisible Hands in the History of the Magic Lantern: Where Theatre Studies and Media Archaeology Meet.” Early Popular Visual Culture vol. 18, no. 4 (2020): 422–47.
4
Sarah Dellmann and Frank Kessler, eds. A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern Slides in the History of Learning (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2020); Martyn Jolly and Elisa deCourcy, eds. The Magic Lantern at Work Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting (New York & Oxon: Routledge, 2020); Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova, eds. Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860-1940 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2022).
5
The Augustinians of the Assumption were founded by Father Emmanuel d’Alzon in France in 1850 and strongly believed in the potential of the press and visual media to shape and educate the Christian community. For a more detailed account see: Delia Guijarro Arribas, Charles Mercier, and Yann Raison du Cleuziou, eds. De la Bonne Presse à Bayard: 150 ans d’histoire d’un groupe de presse et d’édition Catholique (1873-2023) (Lyon: LARHRA, 2023). https://doi.org/10.4000/132bl; Bart G. Moens, “New Light on Maison de La Bonne Presse and its Service des projections.” In Faith in a Beam of Light: Magic Lantern and Belief in Western Europe, 1860-1940, eds. Sabine Lenk and Natalija Majsova (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2022), 57-67. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.TECHNE-MPH-EB.5.129094; Pierre Véronneau, “Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse: Des médias Catholiques pour publics francophones,” 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze vol. 40 (2003): 25-40.
6
Isabelle Saint-Martin, “Usages religieux des projections lumineuses 1890-1914.” In La lanterne magique, pratiques et mise en écriture. Cahiers d’histoire culturelle no. 2 (Tours: Presses de l’université de Tours, 1997), 73-87; Jean Pirotte, “Transmettre les valeurs Chrétiennes par l’image.” In Du par cœur au cœur: Formation religieuse Catholique et renouveau pédagogique en Europe et en Amérique du nord au XXe Siècle, ed. Mélanie Lanouette (Louvain-la-Neuve: UCL Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2009), 89-90; Frank Kessler and Sabine Lenk, “Fighting the Enemy with the Lantern: How French and Belgian Catholic Priests Lectured against Their Common Laic Enemies before 1914.” Early Popular Visual Culture vol. 17, no. 1 (2019): 89-111.
7
Isabelle Saint-Martin, “Usages Catholiques de la lanterne magique dans la France des années 1900.” In Lumineuses projections! La projection fixe éducative, ed. Anne Quillien (Chasseneuil-du-Poitou: Réseau Canopé, 2016), 57-65. In addition to slides, they published the bi-monthly journal Les conférences (1901 to 1911) and the monthly Le Fascinateur (1903-1938).
8
Véronneau, “Le Fascinateur et la Bonne Presse.”
9
Maison de la Bonne Presse. Vues pour projections lumineuses. Catalogue B (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1927).
10
Bart G. Moens, “Staging Through Image and Performance: Producing and Projecting Life Model Lantern Slide for Christian Evangelisation.” In Staging and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Camilla Murgia (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023), 25-48.
11
s.n. “Lundi, 11 octobre 1909. Séance récréative du soir.” Le Fascinateur no. 84 (December 1909): 358-359; M.-L.C. “La Passion d’H. Le Sablais.” Les Conférences no. 234 (1909): 30.
12
In 1911, for example, Sylvaire impersonated a character in the Pathé frères “Série d’art” film Philémon et Baucis and, starting that year, she became one of the leading actresses of the Eclair film company. See, Marlène Pilaete and Philippe Pelletier, “Renée Sylvaire.” Cineartistes (2020). https://www.cineartistes.com/?page=afficher&id=5271.
13
Richard Allen, “The Passion of Christ and the Melodramatic Imagination.” In Melodrama Unbound. Across History, Media, and National Cultures, eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 31-48; Bart G. Moens, Flickering Feelings. The Melodramatic Mode of Expression in Magic Lantern Culture (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming 2025).
14
Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, eds. Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).
15
Anne Jusseaume, “Travailler pour la Bonne Presse: Les Oblates de l’Assomption, les ouvrières et les apprenties (des années 1880 à l’entre-deux-guerres).” In De la Bonne Presse à Bayard: 150 ans d’histoire d’un groupe de presse et d’édition Catholique (1873-2023), eds. Delia Guijarro Arribas, Charles Mercier, and Yann Raison du Cleuziou (Lyon: LARHRA, 2023), 101-120. https://doi.org/10.4000/132ba.
16
Madeleine-Emmanuel and Danièle du Christ. Les Oblates de l’Assomption au service de la presse Catholique (Paris: Archives Augustins de l’Assomption, 1980).
17
Vienne Ton Règne, “Les Oblates de l’Assomption, religieuses missionnaires.” Assomption (2010). https://www.assomption.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/lesoblatesdelassomption.pdf.
18
s.n. La Rév. Mère Marie de La Croix, assistante générale des Oblates de l’Assomption, directrice des ouvrières de La Bonne Presse, 1854-1919 (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1923).
19
Emmanuel and du Christ, Les Oblates, 33; Interview with Father Patrick Zago, archivist at the congregation of Augustinians of the Assumption in Paris, July 13, 2021.
20
Henry Dercy, “Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique. La Maison de la Bonne Presse.” Les Conférences no. 412 (1912): 289–320.
21
The testimony of a certain “Sister Marie-Nelly” from 1980, preserved in the archives of the Assumptionists in Paris, indicates that she started working at Maison de la Bonne Presse as a thirteen-year-old in 1829, and that she joined the congregation three years later (Archives of the Assumptionists, Paris: Les Oblates de l’Assomption à BP). Young girls were therefore recruited until those years.
22
For a more elaborate description of the coloring practices of lantern slides at Maison de la Bonne Presse, see Bart G. Moens, “The Luminous Colours of the Magic Lantern: Shedding Light on the Palette of Life Model Slides.” Documenta vol. 37, no. 2 (2019): 13-43.
23
Jacques Malthête, “Les bandes cinématographiques en couleurs artificielles. Un exemple : Les films de Georges Méliès coloriés à la main.” 1895, Revue d’histoire Du Cinéma 2 (1987): 3-10; Paolo Cherchi Usai, “Color.” In Encyclopedia of Early Cinema, ed. Richard Abel (London & New York: Routledge, 2005), 138-41; Joshua Yumibe, Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012); Joshua Yumibe, “French Film Colorists.” In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane M. Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2013). https://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/french-film-colorists.
24
T. C. Hepworth, The Book of the Lantern. Being a Practical Guide to the Working of the Optical (or Magic) Lantern (London: Wyman & Sons, 1888), 145-146.
25
Stephanie Salmon and Jacques Malthête, “Élisabeth and Berthe Thuillier.” In Women Film Pioneers Project, eds. Jane M. Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2020). https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/elisabeth-and-berthe-thuillier/.
26
Days began with a service at 5:30 AM and continued until 8:00 PM, six days a week. For the religious workers, these demanding conditions often conflicted with the tenets of religious life, creating a tension between their spiritual obligations and the arduous nature of their labor. (Emmanuel and du Christ, Les Oblates, 25-27).
27
Author’s translation from s.n. Catalogue spécial des appareils construits par les soins de la Maison de La Bonne Presse (Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1923), 29.
28
Dercy, “Une œuvre moderne d’apostolat catholique,” 316.
29
Charles Monsch, “Le Fascinateur.” Châpo. Journal de l’amicale des anciens Bayard Presse no. 3 (1998). n.p.
30
s.n. “Séances Récréatives.” Le Fascinateur no. 120 (December 1912): 362.
31
Jusseaume, “Travailler Pour La Bonne Presse.”
32
We also encounter this bias in the women-led services, such as the coloring studio of Maison de la Bonne Presse and in the few extant documents from the congregation’s archives that mainly provide information about leading religious figures.

Moens, Bart G. "Casting Shadows: Women’s Work at the Projection Department of Maison de la Bonne Presse (1895-1920)." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2025. <https://doi.org/10.7916/f5ty-ad08>