SABINE WEISS Introduction by Virginie Chardin
O
ver her career Sabine Weiss has been artistically prolific and made a major contribution to French humanist photography, a genre that includes the greats such as Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Brassaï.
12.5 × 19 cm 144 pages 65 black & white and color photographs softback photo poche n° 166 june 2021 retail price: 13 €
Virginie Chardin is an independent curator and a specialist in photography and images who curated the exhibitions “Willy Ronis in Paris” (Hôtel de Ville, Paris and Beijing’s Capitale Museum, 2005), and “Sabine Weiss” (Jeu de Paume/Château de Tours, 2016). She has been an image consultant for the Chalon-sur-Saône festival (1998-2000), prize director at the Rencontres d’Arles festival (2002-2003) and for the Mois de la Photo festival in Paris (2004). She has also published Séeberger Frères (Actes Sud, “Photo Poche” collection, 2006) and Ernst Haas (Actes Sud, “Photo Poche” collection, 2010).
Weiss clearly enjoys encountering people. Her curiosity knows no bounds and she constantly observes everyone, unknowns and celebrities alike. She is also a technical perfectionist. Born in 1924, she decided to become a photographer at the age of 18. She arrived in Paris in 1946 to become an assistant to Willy Maywald and has worked in a number of fields from illustration to documentary and from portraiture to fashion and advertizing. In 1950, she married the American painter Hugh Weiss and went on to photograph a number of artists, joining the Rapho agency in 1952 through the intermediary of Robert Doisneau. A perfect English speaker, she was often sent abroad and collaborated closely with the Rapho Guillumette agency (directed by Charles Rado in New York).
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Her exhibitions at the MoMA (“Post-War European Photography” (1953) and “The Family of Man” (1955) and the Chicago Art Institute (1954), shortly before the French National Library started showing her work in 1953, brought her international recognition. It was not until 1978, and the huge public acclaim that followed a retrospective in Arras and two solo exhibitions, that she started working in black and white again. Several recent exhibitions, especially the retrospective at the Jeu de Paume Museum in the Château de Tours in 2016 and at Paris’s Pompidou Center exhibition in 2018, show that reassessment of her archives and work has only just begun. In 2020, Kering and the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles awarded her the Women in Motion prize to cap an exceptional career. A tribute exhibition will be staged at the next Rencontres d’Arles in 2021. Sabine Weiss has donated her archives to the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne and they will be conserved and promoted at the new Plateforme 10 museum in autumn 2022.
