Willy Ronis survived the deadly horrors of two world wars and then turned all the more intensively to the newly awakening life of the post-war period. Consequently, people held took centerstage in his work and, alongside Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and Sabine Weiss, he is one of the most important artists of Humanist Photography that emerged in France.
(...) Continue readingWilly Ronis - His career as a photographer began involuntarily
Willy Ronis was born in Paris on 14th August 1910. Photography played an important role in his life from an early age, as his father, a Jewish immigrant, ran a small photography shop on Boulevard Voltaire in Paris. Although young Willy disliked the stuffy confines of the shop as much as his father's monotone photographs, it was there that he was equipped for his later career as a photographer. It was also here that his love for the little people, the poor and wretched who lived in the dirty, dark alleyways of Montmartre began. Initially, Ronis did not aspire to a career as a photographer - his love was music and he wanted to become a composer, following his mother who worked as a piano teacher, although he himself learnt to play the violin. His father's cancer cancelled the young man's plans, however, and he was forced to look after the family business to save it from bankruptcy. This is how Willy Ronis finally took up photography.
Uncompromising search for authenticity
Willy Ronis was determined to pursue a different photographic approach to his father, who had limited himself to conventional portraits for paying customers. He orientated himself on role models such as Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz and experimented with his camera in search of his own means of expression. After the death of his father, he sold the unloved business and set himself up as an independent photographer. From the very beginning, Willy Ronis was not interested in the spectacular and glamorous, but in the everyday, the authentic, which he never staged, but tried to wring out of his immediate surroundings with patience, flexibility and sharp-sightedness. His friend and colleague Doisneau reverently attested that he always found the right moment for his pictures. In doing so, Ronis made no compromises: He eventually left the renowned Rapho photo agency, which he had been a member of since 1946, in a dispute because they printed different captions under his pictures than he had specified. This consistent attitude earned him the nickname ‘Willy, the relentless’.
Iconic pictures of unique moments
Due to his straightforward attitude, which also extended to his political views - he was a member of the Parti communiste français (PCF) until the suppression of the Prague Spring - Willy Ronis repeatedly had to struggle with financial difficulties which also caused his marriage to the painter Marie-Anne Lansiaux to fail. Their adopted son Vincent later died in a hang glider accident. Although he disappeared completely from the public eye for a time, Ronis entered the collective memory with many pictures, including iconic works such as Le nu provençal, which shows his wife washing in the morning, Le petit Parisien, the little Parisian boy with his baguette, and Les amoureux de Bastille, the tender lovers in front of the unmistakable silhouette of Paris with the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame.
Willy Ronis died on 12th September 2009 in his birth and hometown of Paris. He left 95,000 photographic negatives in his estate.
Willy Ronis - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
