Willy Ronis

Willy Ronis (born the August 14th 1910 with Paris) is a Photographe French which was devoted to the images taken on the sharp one, in black & white.

Biography

Willy Ronis (1910 -) is the son of a Jew of Odessa (Ukraine) and of a Jewish pianist Lithuania, having fled at the beginning of the 20th century the Pogrom S. Mélomanes, they met in friendly exiled Russian and settled in the 9th district. After an use of retoucher in photography in a considered studio, his/her father opens his own studio under the pseudonym of Roness.

In 1929, Willy Ronis is registered in Faculty of Law while hoping to become type-setter. But at the time of its return of the military service in 1932, his/her father, very sick, asks him to help it with the studio. It is not very interested by conventional photography but is impassioned for the exposures of photographs. Its political opinions lean on the left; it photographs the working demonstrations of 1934. In 1936, his/her father dies, the studio is sold and the family moves in the 11th district.

Starting from this date, it is devoted to the report. With the rise of the Popular front, the same ideals bring closer Ronis to Robert Capa and David “Chim” Seymour, photographers already famous. It also on the occasion to know Kertesz, Brassaï and Cartier-Bresson. But, compared to the vision of its pars, Willy Ronis develops a true originality, marked by the attention paid to “the harmony choral society of the sways in the crowd and to the joy of popular holidays”.

After the Second world war, it enters to the Agence Rapho and, supported by his friend Romeo Martinez, collaborates in Regards , Time or Life .

Belleville-Ménilmontant , On the wire of the chance and My Paris are among the important books that it published. One then could say that Willy Ronis, with Robert Doisneau and Edouard Boubat, is “ one of the major photographers of this French school of the post-war period which knew to reconcile with talent the humanistic values and the esthetic requirements of poetic realism ”. It will take part in the Fifties in the group of the XV in the sides of Robert Doisneau, Pierre Jahan or Rene-Jacques to defend photography like a true artistic expression.

In the Years 1970 -1980, parallel to its activities of photographer, it devotes much time to teaching: with the School of art of Avignon, then with faculties of Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles. It creates there a course of history of photography and Pierre-Jean Amar meets it then. In 1972, it settles with It Isle-on-the-Sorgue (Vaucluse). In 1983, it bequeathed its work at the French State.

In 2001, it created its last series of photographs.

Today the work of Willy Ronis is exposed in the whole world and its images appear in the collections of the largest museums.

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