In Tarnos, the former workers’ town of the Forges, the work of Willy Ronis finds a natural territory. Presented at the Église Notre-Dame des Forges on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Popular Front, the exhibition restores the photographer to the heart of what has always nourished his gaze: ordinary lives and the memory of social struggles.
Willy Ronis remains one of the great figures of French humanist photography. Images now inscribed in collective memory, so much have they shaped a certain idea of the twentieth century. Yet behind their apparent simplicity, these photographs are never mere testimony. They express a way of inhabiting the world, of still believing in a possible fraternity among human beings. “Photography is emotion,” Ronis said. An emotion which, in his work, never separates the human from the political.
The exhibition brings together nearly sixty original prints, including several previously unseen works, retracing both the social history of the Popular Front and the photographer’s beginnings. The 1930s appear here as a foundational moment. Ronis forged both his visual language and a lasting political consciousness there. Through demonstrations, the first departures on paid holidays, workers’ gatherings and street scenes, he observes not so much the great historical events as what they produce in human relationships. His camera becomes a tool of attention and a way of taking part in the world.
In Tarnos, the images enter into dialogue with archives, documents and testimonies devoted to the local history of the Forges and to the workers’ memory of the site. This perspective inscribes Ronis’s work within a broader history: that of the social struggles of the twentieth century and the transformations of labor. A contemporary section around the theme “Resistance & commitments” also extends these connections between past and present, underscoring how some questions remain urgent. In 1936, many observers considered the social advances won by popular movements impossible. It is precisely this idea that the exhibition seeks to convey to new generations: history is never written in advance.
Ronis himself never ceased to defend his fidelity to commitment. He spoke of his work as a “poetics of commitment”, a phrase that aptly summarizes the singular balance of his oeuvre, always situated between gentleness of vision and political consciousness. In 1983, he chose to donate all of his photographs to the French State, considering these images less as an individual patrimony than as a shared collective memory.
Jean-Jacques Ader
“Le temps conquis” 90 years of the Popular Front – exhibition of photographs by Willy Ronis, from May 2 to June 6, at the Église des Forges in Tarnos (64).
Information: https://www.ville-tarnos.fr/actualites/exposition-photo-90-ans-du-front-populaire/
