La Galerie Rouge presents its new exhibition, Willy Ronis, Le Tourbillon de la Vie.
An emblematic figure of humanist photography, Willy Ronis (1910-2009) defined this French school as “the gaze of the photographer who loves human beings.” Influenced by music and painting, he composed his images with the precision of an artist, capturing everyday life with a rare sensitivity and undisguised joy. He saw photography as a way to sublimate life, stating: “Sometimes, it is possible to steal the sublime moment and derive immense satisfaction from it.”
From Paris to Provence, via London and Venice, his lens captured social struggles, the hope for a better world after the Second World War, and the flashes of life found randomly on the streets. This exhibition explores the diversity of his photographic work through emblematic images and others, less famous, which renew the way we look at his work. Willy Ronis claimed this taste for the diversity of subjects as a form of freedom: “I prefer to try a little bit of everything, even if it means focusing my effort on what I like to do and rejecting what interests me less. Being free? Yes, but it’s not so much a question of freedom as a taste for diverse things.”
The photographic prints exhibited in Willy Ronis, Le Tourbillon de la Vie, come from the donation of Tina Vazquez, a person who was, throughout her life, a helper, a friend, a full-fledged member of his family. This exhibition highlights the generosity of Willy RONIS and the bonds of friendship that united the photographer with Ms. Vazquez. She recounts her relationship with the photographer:
“I met Willy and Marie-Anne [Marie-Anne Lansiaux, Willy Ronis’s wife] in the 1970s, through the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) where I was an employee. Because of his cultural origins, Willy was very sensitive to this house founded at the beginning of the 19th century by Russian Jewish doctors to help Jewish populations persecuted throughout history. Marie-Anne and I immediately fell in love. She thus left me a privileged place in the bubble in which her illness had enclosed her over the years, to the great happiness of Willy but also of her son, Vincent, who was an extremely kind man. My father and Marie-Anne died one after the other. My children say that since then I have treated Willy like a father. Willy saw my children grow up, watched over my mother when I was working, celebrated our family holidays with us.
In short, I grew old with him and, just like my parents, I took care of him until his last breath. I was 63 when he left us. I had become a grandmother to three grandchildren whom he was able to know. He was 99 years old, but I would have loved for us to blow out his 100 candles together.”
Resonating with Willy Ronis’s work, photographs by Édouard Boubat and Jean-Philippe Charbonnier will be exhibited in the gallery’s basement. These two photographers, represented by La Galerie Rouge, knew Willy Ronis well, having all three been members of the Rapho agency and the “Club des 30 x 40.”
Willy Ronis, Le Tourbillon de la Vie
March 20 – May17, 2025
La Galerie Rouge
3 rue du Pont Louis-Philippe
75004 Paris
01 42 77 38 24
www.lagalerierouge.paris
