French postwar photographer Willy Ronis dies
Last Updated: Saturday, September 12, 2009 | 3:58 PM ET
CBC News
An illness in the family got Willy Ronis, seen in his Paris apartment, into photography. (Patrick Kovarik/AFP/Getty Images)Willy Ronis, considered one of France's greatest postwar photographers, has died at age 99. Stéphane Ledoux, head of the Eyedea photo agency, said Ronis passed away Saturday in a Paris hospital, where he had been admitted days earlier.
"We have lost the last of the great men," said Ledoux, whose agency — previously named the Rapho Agency — handled Ronis' works for decades.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed the photographer as the "chronicler of postwar social aspirations and the poet of a simple and joyous life."
'I never took a mean photo. I never wanted to make people look ridiculous'— Willy Ronis
Ronis and his contemporaries, Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, formed a photography triumvirate in France with their shots of everyday life in the country.
Ronis pointed his lens on the streets of working-class Paris — in particular, the eastern neighbourhoods of Belleville and Menilmontant — in bistros and gardens and also strikes.
"I never took a mean photo," Ronis remarked in a 2005 interview with The Associated Press.
"I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed."
Born in the City of Light on Aug. 14, 1910, Ronis first studied violin but soon took over the family's photographic studio when his father got sick. He shot family photos, babies and regular events for four years.
He began doing photojournalism in 1936, shooting a Bastille Day parade, and then worked steadily in that vein until the Second World War, when he joined the army.
He worked for many publications, including Life magazine and Vogue, and collected numerous awards including the Kodak prize in 1947, the Gold Medal at the Venice Biennale in 1957 and the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres for photography in 1979 from France's Ministry of Culture.
Never one to sit around, he took up skydiving at age 85, taking a shot as he plummeted to Earth. But in 2001, he was forced to put the camera down due to physical ailments.
With files from The Associated Press
