Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 27, will open the exhibition of the Jeu de Paume and the Château de Tours, dedicated to the French photographer Willy Ronis. The exhibition was designed by Marta Gili and Matthieu Rivalin. The two commissioners were able to draw in the endowment fund bequeathed to the State by the photographer in 1983. His photography tackles the dailylife with gentleness and detachment. If the public generally knows an optimistic and joyful facet of Ronis’ work, the exhibition also traces its communist convictions and its interest in the working and deprived classes. Among other things, the public will be able to discover the look of a photographer on the world, a distracted traveler, an explorer of cities and moments.
Born in 1910 in Paris and died in 2009, Willy Ronis is the son of Jewish parents who emigrated from Eastern Europe. At the age of seven, he was introduced to the violin by his mother. At sixteen, he receives his first camera and begins to immortalize Paris. In 1932, he entered the studio of his father’s photography. At the same time, his political and civic commitment turned to the communist. In 1937, he bought his first Rolleiflex. For the first time, it is published in Plaisir de France. There will be reports on the social crisis at Citroën (1938), a cruise in the Mediterranean, before living in the South zone during the Second World War. In the aftermath of this, he joined the PCF, integrates the photo agency Rapho. In the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to produce a number of reportages, was shown at the MoMA with Brassaï, Doisneau and Izis (1953) and received the gold medal of the Mostra Biennale Internazionale de Fotografia of Venice (1957). In 1972, he left Paris to settle in Gordes then at Isle-sur-la-Sorgue after financial difficulties. He is the guest of honor at the Rencontres d’Arles in 1980, receives the Nadar prize the following year, and then a retrospective at the Palais de Tokyo in 1985. He will be exhibited in New York, Moscow, Bologna, Paris. The 90s are for him prolix years. It publishes enormously. Among these works, Willy Ronis at Photo Poche (1991), La Provence chez Hoëbeke (1998). In the years 2000, Willy Ronis, the Val and the edges of Marne (2004) or Nudes at Terre Bleue with a text by Phillipe Sollers. He was one of the leading figures in French humanist photography.
Willy Ronis
Jeu de Paume — Château de Tours
From June 27 to Octobre 29
25 Avenue André Malraux,
37000 Tours, France
