In southeastern France, and especially in Monaco, Jean Gilletta was one of the most famous and successful photographers in the region because of his magnificent landscape images. His great skill and fame allowed him to enter the world of publishing around 1897. He founded the photo publishing house Giletta frères éditeur, which still exists today, and it distributed large-format and expensive souvenir photographs with great success. They conveyed the image of a region with an exuberant joie de vivre and helped to establish the myth of the Côte-d'Azur. The photograph offered here is a lively image of Monte Carlo during its heyday. Most people in the photo are looking at the photographer, pointing to the eventful nature such a photographic shooting had then.
