Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin, Minister of Culture, learned with great sadness of the passing of Sabine Weiss, emblematic photographer of the French humanist movement, with whom she had the privilege of exchanging the past summer at the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles.
Describing herself willingly as a craftsman rather than an artist, Sabine Weiss turned very early to photography. After learning at the Boissonnas family studio in Geneva, she comes to Paris to assist Willy Maywald, a famous fashion and portrait photographer, whose passion for natural lighting she shares.
In her own right since 1950, she has had a career in advertising and fashion, while at the same time developing her personal work of street photographs, in black and white, made according to her Parisian roamings.
Robert Doisneau invites him to join his agency, Rapho, which brings together the greatest names of humanist photography, after having been won over by his deep attention to the anonymous and the most modest people.
It is in the United States that she first knows recognition. Collaborating with the largest American magazines, it is exhibited many times.
From her snapshots and compositions emerges an immense technical mastery, as well as an attachment to grasp what she called “atmospheres”.
With the empathy that we know about her subjects, often street children, Sabine Weiss denounces with her clichés poverty and social injustices, everywhere in the world, as with The Little Egyptian, Portrait of a little girl made near Luxor, in 1983.
The attentive gaze she has kept on our societies for many decades gives her work a precious documentary significance.
From her reports on Spain and Portugal in the 1950s to portraits of celebrities from the world of culture, such as Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Sagan, and Nikki de Saint Phalle, her generous and solar photography has captured a whole era.
Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin extends her deepest condolences to her family and loved ones.