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autoportrait: willy ronis


willy ronis, autoportrait, 1951.© willy ronis, rapho eyedea via liberation.fr

i love willy ronis' self-portrait.
is it me, or is his shoe on the wrong foot?

i hadn't heard of mr. ronis, until i read of his passing in the new york times. but the images he's captured are very recognizable. there's definitely a population of new york girls, of a certain age (mine), before email ruled the way we wooed, that has wishfully penned a ronis postcard or two (or absent the nerve to send it, taped it to a wall or mirror somewhere in her apartment).


le petit parisien. 1952.



les amoureux de la bastille. 1957.


ah, those were the days...

***

i appreciate his inspiration and his intent:

“It is my contemporaries who most interest me, ordinary people with ordinary lives,” he told The New York Times in 2005, when a retrospective of his work at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris was drawing enormous crowds. “I have never sought out the extraordinary or the scoop. I looked at what complemented my life. The beauty of the ordinary was always the source of my greatest emotions.”

“I never took a mean photo,” he told The Associated Press in 2005. “I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed.”

link to the full nytimes piece here...

and a very nice video, via france 24....