Willy Ronis

Ronis was born in Paris on 14 August 1910. His early photography was preoccupied with social unrest and the rise of the leftist Popular Front. His first published photograph shows a street demonstration on Bastille Day 1936 and he maintained a lifelong commitment to leftist causes. Despite the political intent with which Ronis’ career began, he is best remembered for his romanticised vision of Paris and its inhabitants. He preferred to walk around his local area of Belleville-Ménilmontant with camera in hand rather than travel. Ronis described the spontaneity of this approach, saying, “most of my photographs were taken on the spur of the moment, very quickly, just as they occurred”.

During the Second World War Ronis was a meteorologist with the French air force and served briefly with the artillery. In 1972 he became a photography teacher at the School of Fine Arts, Avignon and Saint Charles,Marseille. During the war he also met his wife, Marie-Anne Lansiaux, who became the subject of one of his most famous photographs, ‘Nu provençal’ (1949). The photograph shows Marie-Anne washing at a sink in a rustic room whilst on holiday in Provence.

Ronis won the Prix Kodak in 1947 but rather than joining the Magnum Photo Agency, recently established by his friends, David Seymour and Robert Capa, he took up with the Rapho Agency whose members included Doisneau and Brassaï. In 1955 Ronis was included in Edward Steichen’s vast ‘Family of Man’ exhibition that encapsulated the humanist spirit of photography at the time. In his later career Ronis went on to enjoy an array of awards and honours including the Prix Nadar (1981), being made Honoured Photographer at Les Rencontres d’Arles (1980) and Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1986). In 1995 the Museum of Modern Art commissioned a touring retrospective that was intended to mark his centenary. Ronis died, however, at the age of 99 on 12 September 2009, the year before the exhibition opened.