Willy Ronis was a French photographer best known for his photographs of life in postwar Paris and Provence, who spent his career roaming the Parisian streets capturing people in love, at work, and at play in lyrical black-and-white images, claimed an interest in
"ordinary people with ordinary lives." He was a central figure in the
"humanist photography" movement, alongside colleagues
Robert Doisneau,
Henri Cartier-Bresson, and
George Brassaï, celebrating the poetry in the everyday in warm, witty images.
I have never sought out the extraordinary or the scoop. I looked for what complemented my life. The beauty of the ordinary was always the source of my greatest emotions. -- Willy Ronis
Working in his parents' photography studio,
Willy Ronis honed his sense of proportion and composition. Ronis was born in Paris; his father was a Jewish refugee from Odessa, and his mother was a Lithuanian refugee who had fled the pogroms. His father established a photography studio in Montmartre, and his mother taught piano. The boy's first love was music, and he aspired to be a composer.
When Ronis returned from military service in 1932, his violin studies were put on hold because his father's cancer forced him to take over the family portrait business; His love of music can be seen in his photographs. When his father died in 1936, the business collapsed, and Ronis went freelance, with his first photographs appearing in
Regards.
Willy Ronis met
David Szymin and
Robert Capa in 1937 and did his first work for
Plaisir de France; in 1938-39, he reported on a Citroen strike and traveled in the Balkans. Ronis, like Cartier-Bresson, was a member of the
Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires and remained a leftist.
Ronis was inspired to start exploring photography by the work of photographers
Alfred Stieglitz and
Ansel Adams. After his father died in 1936, he closed the studio and joined the photo agency
Rapho, where he worked alongside
Brassaï,
Robert Doisneau, and
Ergy Landau.
Most of my photographs were taken on the spur of the moment, very quickly, just as they occurred. All attention focuses on the specific instant, almost too good to be true, which can only vanish in the following one. -- Willy Ronis
Willy Ronis was the first French photographer to work for
Life magazine. In 1953, Edward Steichen curated a show at the
Museum of Modern Art called
Five French Photographers, which featured
Ronis,
Henri Cartier-Bresson,
Robert Doisneau,
Izis, and
Brassaï.
He was also featured in the
Family of Man exhibition in 1955, and received in 1957 the Gold Medal from the
Venice Biennale. Ronis began teaching at the School of Fine Arts in Avignon, Aix-en-Provence, and Saint Charles, Marseilles in the 1950s. The Minister of Culture awarded him the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres for Photography in 1979. In 1981, Ronis won the
Prix Nadar for his photobook
Sur le fil du hasard.
Marie-Anne Lansiaux (1910-91), a Communist militant painter, was the subject of Ronis' well-known 1949 photograph,
Nu provençal (Provençal naked). The photograph, which was taken in a house that Marie-Anne and he had just purchased in Gordes, showed Marie-Anne washing at a basin with a water pitcher on the floor and an open window through which the viewer can see a garden; it is notable for its ability to convey an easy feeling of Provençal life.
"The destiny of this image, published constantly around the world, still astonishes me," Ronis said of the photograph. Ronis spent the 1960s and 1980s in Provence and photographed Marie-Anne, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease at the time, sitting alone in a park surrounded by autumn trees.
