Showing posts with label Robert Doisneau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robert Doisneau. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Willy Ronis, Paris photographer, 1910-2009

You may have noticed my affection and awe for early and mid-twentieth century street photographers, ha, curiously also often from Paris, and especially Robert Doisneau and Henri-Cartier Bresson.

Well, today I have been admiring the work of Willy Ronis...


Place Vendome, Paris, 1947


... who has worked with the same agency as Doisneau, and been in exhibitions with Cartier-Bresson, and was also apparantly the first French photographer to work for Life Magazine, the B&W photography books of which I used to seek out and read in libraries when I was at school, one of my first photographic influences, admiring photographs of life like this one...


Le Petit Parisien, 1952


Willy Ronis was born in 1910 and died last year in September. His street photographs of Paris and portraits of French couples are warm and endearing, and his nude studies are beautiful.

I greatly admire the way he captures ordinarly life, and with kindness, much like Robert Doisneau.

“It is my contemporaries who most interest me, ordinary people with ordinary lives,”
“I have never sought out the extraordinary or the scoop. I looked at what complemented my life. The beauty of the ordinary was always the source of my greatest emotions.”


~ Willy Ronis, quotes to the New York Times, 2005








Carrefour Sevres-Babylone, Paris, 1948


Monday, February 15, 2010

Kiss by the Hotel de Ville ~ Robert Doisneau

In honour of love, and photography, hehe, I wanted to feature this favourite Robert Doisneau photograph, from mid-last century Paris,

Kiss by the Hotel de Ville, 1950



Robert Doisneau, Kiss by the Hotel de Ville,1950,
© Estate of Robert Doisneau
http://www.robertdoisneau.com/

I love great photography from this era!
Here's another from Robert Doisneau,
which I find so whimsical and perfect...

Fox terrier on the Pont des Arts
Robert Doisneau, 1953





Robert Doisneau, Fox terrier on the Pont des Arts, 1953
© Estate of Robert Doisneau
http://www.robertdoisneau.com/

I also love his street photography of children in Paris, which, after his wikipedia page says this*, I must find out more about!

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Doisneau
"Doisneau's work gives unusual prominence and dignity to children's street culture (wiki link below); returning again and again to the theme of children at play in the city, unfettered by parents. His work treats their play with seriousness and respect. In his honour, and owing to this, there are several Ecole Primaire (Primary Schools) named after him. An example is at Veretz (Indre-et-Loire)."

Wikipedia link on Children's street culture