Willy Ronis, the photographer who gave wings to his career in the Balkans, dies at 99
Only a week ago, Willy Ronis, 99 years of age, was hailed as the oldest of the French photographers living in France. On the night of the 11th to the 12th of September his heart stopped beating, closing a long career in photography, only just shy of reaching the centenary. Willy Ronis was born in August 1910 at the renowned quarter of Montmartre, Paris. Montmartre was the heart of a rising artistic community at the beginning of the XXth century, but Willy Ronis was too young to have entered in their company. However the heights of Montmartre, the highest point of Paris, may have entrained his eye to catch life-scenes from an advantageous and artistically-commanding point of view.
Early years
Willy Ronis was born of parents of Jewish origin. His father had left Odessa and had set up a photographic workshop in the 11th district of Paris and was making portraits and photographs for a living. Willy was offered his first camera, a folding Kodak, when he was 15. But that gift, which he used to take some pictures of Paris, did not drag him into photography. It was only the illness of his father that put young Willy Ronis behind the counter of the photographic workshop. But that was not to last too long. Some time after his father’s death in 1936, Willy Ronis left the photographic workshop and began outdoor experiments on his own. “Only later, my father’s death allowed me to escape from the counter of the photographic workshop. It was only then that this marriage of reason with photography became a marriage of love. These circumstances do not conceal that there was no vocation behind the craft to which I was to dedicate the whole of my existence” – confessed the well known photographer.
He bought a Rolleiflex camera and started working in France, shooting his first celebrated photos. Willy Ronis, who was in 1936 a sympathizer of the French Communist Party, was drawn into the atmosphere of the manifestations and strikes as well as popular festivities organized by the French Front Populaire. The year 1936 saw his first photos in periodical journals. In 1937, he made his first photographic report in France for the magazine Plaisir de France. In 1938, Regards, the communist periodical, sent him to take photos of workers on strike at the Citro쮠factory.
Albania in the career of the photographer
As the Albanian press was announcing the death of the world-renowned photographer, (Standard, 14.09.2009), any crossing point between the career of the photographer and Albania was ignored. In fact, Ronis’ career was intimately linked to Albania as well as to the other coastal Balkan countries like Greece and the coastal parts of the then Yugoslavia. This link was made at a moment that was crucial in his admission into the professional life as a reporter.
By 1938 Willy Ronis had been acquainted with David Seymour (Chim) and to Robert Capa and to a group of other foreign photographers living in Paris and which were later to become celebrated international photographers. In 1938, a friend proposed to Willy Ronis to take an au pair cruiser trip to the Adriatic and Ionian seas. He took photos of the coasts of the Balkan states, in parts of what was then Yugoslavia, as well as on the coasts of Albania and Greece.
Ronis had his camera with him and took pictures. When he returned to France after his 15 days spent in the Balkans, Willy Ronis spoke of the trip and of the photos taken in the Balkans to his fellow photographers. In 1939, as fascist Italy attacked Albania and the war spread to the Balkans, Robert Capa, who had by that time left his first marks as a war reporter in Spain, decided to take advantage of the situation. Capa wrote an article and made reprints of the photos that Willy Ronis had taken in 1938 in the Balkans and sent the whole bundle to press and news agencies in five big capitals of the major European countries, with an accompanying note: “Retour d’un rꤥnt voyage dans les Balkans de notre reporter Willy Ronis” (Return of a recent travel in the Balkans by our reporter Willy Ronis).
This launched the international career of the French photographer, who was to become one of the most illustrious of the XXth century. (This is the story that Willy Ronis confessed to Erwan and Tangui Perron, in the interview that was published by R귯lution, nР764, 20.10.1994. He has also narrated this episode of his life in many other interviews).
The War Years
After the report was published and Ronis was quoted as the reporter, Capa had the idea of making a voyage across the world with Willy Ronis and his mother. Capa was to shoot a film and Ronis to take photos. But the Second World War interrupted their project. Willy Ronis had his documents in Paris stamped with the “Jew” label, but managed to escape to southern France and to obtain other documents without the stamp. His mother lived through the war in Paris, and was not denounced by tenants and neighbors. Jewish cousins, neighbors and friends of the photographer did not make it through the Second World War. Among them was his friend Jacques, of Russian Jewish parents, who had initiated Ronis to communist ideas.
After the war, Ronis took a membership card of the Communist party, but “was not at ease” with this engagement. “I had convictions, but I did not always understand. In fact, I did not live very well with my siding. In 1965, I did not take my card again. But this has not changed a thing in my essential convictions. At this moment, I have the same. In fact, I was not made to be a militant. I never militated happily. I did not have a political head” – confessed Ronis to Erwan and Tangui Perron.
Willy Ronis – a poet of the image
Willy Ronis has been described as a “humanist photographer” and as a “poet of the image”. He has gone deep into many subjects from massive scenes, such as strikes, festivals, celebrations, to intimate portraits and nus (naked studies). He is also one of the most celebrated photographers of Paris and of Parisian life-scenes.
In 1947, more than 20 years from the time that he received his first camera, which was a folding Kodak, Willy Ronis obtained the Kodak Award. In 1953 his work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art of New York. In 1957 he got the Golden Award of the Bienale of Venice. In 1979 he received in France the Grand Prix National des Arts et des Lettres pour la Photographie (The Big National Award of Arts and Letters for Photography). In 1983 he gave his archives to the French state. The donation will take effect after his death.
In these archives are also pictures taken in Albania during his cruiser trip in 1938.
It happened in those early days ō
A short story
Such was the likeness of the photos taken by Willy Ronis to the photos another “camera painter and poet”, the famous Robert Doisneau, that one of the French newspapers once marked one of Willy Ronis’ photos as having been shot by Robert Doisneau. “I saw one day in a weekly, one of my photos signed Doisneau. I kindly asked for an explanation, because the weekly was a sympathetic publication. The editor, who was embarrassed, had an idea she put in these words: “What if we proposed to Doisneau to have his own upcoming photo in the pages of the weekly signed Ronis?” ŠThat day, Robert and I had very good laughs on the telephone” – confessed Willy Ronis to Erwan and Tangui Perron.
