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2009 EDITION

July 7th - September 13th

Willy Ronis - Place Vendôme, 1947 © Willy Ronis/Rapho

Willy Ronis

RETROSPECTIVE

The 80 photographs making up this retrospective in the Chapelle Sainte-Anne present a specific aspect of the work of Willy Ronis: a deep awareness of the nature of images, despite his being traditionally categorised within mainstream Humanism. For Ronis photography was not an end in itself but a means of expressing his experience of the social realities of his surroundings. Taken in the street, a factory, the countryside or some intimate setting, his photographs evoke moments which span his entire career and are the basisof his personal version of reality.

After World War II the torch-bearers of French photography were the Groupe des XV, who included Robert Doisneau, René-Jacques, Marcel Bovis and, of course, Willy Ronis. Narrative approaches like anecdote, parody, tenderness and visual finesse were the raison d’être of French Humanistic photography. Busy Paris streets, working-class neighbourhoods, people out for a walk, children playing and other scenes of daily life were the backdrop for photographs blending poetry and a spontaneous claim to ‘change the world’.

Ronis was nonetheless very much aware of the dishonesty of any attempt by the photographer to play down social injustice. He set out to explore the life of the destitute with method, conviction and lucidity: photographs of workers, picket lines and passionate harangues by union members in the Citroën and Renault factories in 1936 and 1950, the St. Etienne mines in 1948 and the streets of Paris in 1950. But in

addition to his empathy with workers in the factory, at home and in society, we sense a photographer whose social-political interests were not satisfied by a few fragments of lives picked up here and there; what he wanted was active commitment. Ronis does not concentrate on the sordid and does not disguise poverty or romanticise the poor; rather, he sides with their demands and their struggle.


Marta Gili


Selection of images: Willy Ronis and Marta Gili.

In collaboration with the department of Architecture and Heritage / Ministry of Culture and Communication and with the backing of Neuflize Vie, lead patron of the Jeu de Paume and of Olympus France. Supported by Arte.

Willy Ronis

Born in 1910 in Paris.

Lives and works in Paris.


Willy Ronis began to devote himself to photography in 1932, when family obligations compelled him to join his father’s photography studio. When his father died four years later, he decided to become a freelance photographer, reporter and illustrator, and quit the studio.

From 1936, Willy Ronis focused on reportage. The Front Populaire movement was on the rise in France, and he shared the same ideals as Robert Capa and David ‘Chim’ Seymour, who were already famous photographers. He also had the opportunity to meet Kertész, Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson. But in comparison to his peers he developed a truly original vision, marked by the attention he paid to ‘the choral harmony of the crowd movements and the joy of popular festivities’.

After World War Two Willy Ronis joined the Rapho agency and, with the support of his friend Romeo Martinez, contributed to Regards, Time and Life.

He won the Kodak Prize in 1947 and the Gold Medal at the 1957 Venice Biennale. Belleville-Ménilmontant, Sur le fil du hasard (an album which earned him the Prix Nadar in 1981) and Mon Paris are among his most important books. By this time it was said that, together with Robert Doisneau and Édouard Boubat, he was ‘one of the major photographers of the post-war French school which skilfully reconciled humanist values with the aesthetic demands of poetic realism’. In the 1950s he took part in the Groupe des XV alongside Robert Doisneau, Pierre Jahan and René-Jacques, defending photography as a true form of artistic expression.

During the 1970s and ’80s, in parallel to his work as a photographer, Willy Ronis spent a great deal of time teaching, first at the Fine Arts College in Avignon, then at the universities of Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, where he created a class on the history of photography and met Pierre-Jean Amar. In 1972 he settled in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, in the Vaucluse in southeastern France.

He was awarded France’s Grand Prize of Arts and Letters for Photography in 1979, and was the guest of honour at the 11th Rencontres d’Arles in 1980. He was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1989.

The exhibition Willy Ronis à Paris was held at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 2005, to coincide with his 95th birthday.

His uvre is now on display all over the world, and his pictures feature in the collections of the greatest museums.

Willy Ronis bequeathed his uvre to the French state in 1983; his archives will be donated after his death.