Hôtel de Ville
Willy Ronis
Mairie de Paris Hôtel de Ville - 29, rue de Rivoli.
Until 29 february 2006.
Mayor House of
of Paris pays a vibrating homage to one of the most famous street
photographer of the capital: Willy Ronis. Fifty years of
invaluable and popular stereotypes tell us the memory of the paving
stone in stereotypes in black and white so alive that they speak
immediately to our memory, including those which weren't born at this
time so much these images are timeless. Extremely attached to the
"people of modest means", these anonymous heroes who populate make the
city and it breathe, Ronis is a transformer of simple situations.
This friend of Jacques Prévert took his first photographs in
1927 and naturally will let himself take pleasure by popular
subjects. In 1935, it takes part in a collective exhibition which
joins together some great names of the time: Cartier-Bresson,
Brassaï, Man Ray. It will live all its life, until today, in
Belleville Ménimontant, district so colored by its ordinary
passions. According to the evolution of the city over more than one
half-century, it will turn to the new districts of the Seventies such
as Beaubourg or Defense to catch the new urban evolution and to
represent the social acceleration which results from this. 200
photographs tell us the poetic eye of Willy Ronis in the shows of
reception of the Town hall. The last great Parisian photographer
of the XXth still alive.