Chère Sabine – A tribute to the photographer Sabine Weiss

LE SALON DE LA PHOTO
13 – 17 NOVEMBER 2014
Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles, Paris

 

Sabine Weiss was born in 1924 in Saint-Gingolph, Switzerland. She started taking photographs at a young age, with a little Bakelite camera she bought with her savings. “When I was little I made contact prints in little wooden boxes I placed on my windowsill, fixed with kitchen salt!” At seventeen years old she decided to become a photographer because it was what she most enjoyed. At 18 she joined the Boissonas studio in Geneva, which was already celebrating its 80th anniversary. From 1942 to 1945 she learned photographic techniques and how to use equipment that seems very primitive today. “That’s when I learned the techniques of lighting, retouching, and how to use wooden 18×24 and 24×30 field cameras. I did everything: printing, glazing, making stop baths, and delivering pictures to customers.” In 1945, she got her diploma and opened her own studio in the centre of Geneva.

 

She made advertising photographs and portraits, and did her first reportage work before moving permanently to Paris in 1946. Shortly after she arrived, she immortalized 1950s Paris, with its workingclass districts redolent with the special atmosphere of the post-war period. Recommended by a friend, she introduced herself to Willy Maywald, the famous fashion photographer, and became his assistant. “When I came to Paris at age 22, I was able to work for Maywald. I worked in conditions that would be unimaginable today, but with him I understood the importance of natural light. Natural light as a source of emotion.” Through Maywald she met many personalities from the world of art, literature, and theatre such as Cocteau, Gérard Philippe, Edwige Feuillière, Utrillo, Rouault, Léger and Arp, and was present at the opening of the House of Dior and the presentation of its first collection at 37 avenue Montaigne.

 

In 1949 she met her husband, the American painter Hugh Weiss, and decided to set up her own business. In 1952, Robert Doisneau at Vogue discovered her photographs and suggested she join the Rapho agency for which he himself was working. The same year she signed a contract with Vogue and worked there for nine years. In the USA, Charles Rado, who represented Rapho in New York, supported her work and presented it to a number of American magazines, for which she was to work for many years: Time, Life, the New York Times, Newsweek, Town & Country, Fortune, Holiday, European Travel & Life, and Esquire. In 1954 she had exhibitions in the USA: at the Chicago Art Institute, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, at Bard College, at the Limelight Gallery in NewYork, at the Nebraska Art Center in Lincoln, and in Germany on the occasion of the exhibition entitled Subjective Fotografie organized by Otto Steinert. In 1955 American photographer Edward Steichen selected three of her photographs for the exhibition he was organizing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York entitled The Family of Man, an event that was to be a landmark in the history of photography. “He first asked me “do you like Mankind?”, and in the end he selected three photos. I think my work moved him”. In the 1960s she carried on working with advertising agencies and the European and American press, sharing her work between commissions and exploring her own personal themes. In recent years, Sabine Weiss has devoted herself to exhibitions highlighting her so-called humanist work, which is of special emotional significance to her.

 

Her photographic work is multi-disciplinary:

• PORTRAITS: a keen music lover, she has taken photographs of great composers, musicians and conductors for the press and also for Pathé Marconi (Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Pablo Casals, Stan Getz, Maria Callas, and others).

For Vogue, l’Art d’Aujourd’hui, and L’Oeil she has produced portraits of famous artists, writers and personalities (Cocteau,

Breton, Braque, Miro, Giacometti, Dubuffet, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Françoise Sagan, Coco Chanel, Jeanne Moreau, etc.)

• FASHION AND ADVERTISING: she had produced countless fashion photographs and designed advertising campaigns commissioned by agencies in a range of different fields (beauty, alcoholic beverages, textiles, children’s fashion, and so on).

• REPORTAGE: she has travelled the world on press commissions or for her own pleasure.

• HUMANIST PHOTOGRAPHY: she is fascinated by daily life, emotions and people, and her work is a combination of poetry and sharp social observation. “Light, gestures, glances, movement, silence, rest, hard work, relaxation…I would like to incorporate everything into this instant so that the essence of Man can express itself with a minimum of means.” “My photos

(…) express a certain love I feel for life”.

 

Sabine Weiss dislikes being called an ‘artist’. Her aim is to bear witness rather than to create: – “I was a witness, I thought that a powerful photo should tell us something about the human condition. I always felt the need to denounce things with my photos: the injustices one encounters.” – “I don’t like spectacular things, I prefer sobriety… the question is not whether you like something, you have to be moved by it. A love for people is a beautiful thing. It’s a serious matter, and it runs terribly deep. You have to go beyond anecdote, uncover the chalice, and adopt a respectful attitude. I take photographs to record what is ephemeral, to capture happenstance, and to keep images of what will disappear: gestures, postures, objects that bear witness to our presence. The camera collects them, and captures the mat the very moment when they vanish”. Sabine Weiss mainly works in black and white, concentrating on achieving precise framing, quality of light, and atmosphere… She made photography into a lifestyle, walking around Paris—often at night—looking for street scenes, lives of solitude, children playing, and human faces expressing fleeting emotion… Her outstanding corpus includes many children, old people, and smiling stars… all imbued with spontaneity and simplicity: “I really like the constant dialogue between myself, my camera and my subject, which sets me apart from certain other photographers who do not seek this dialogue and prefer to distance themselves from their subjects.” Doisneau said of Sabine Weiss’ work: “These apparently inoffensive scenes have been shot through with a deliberate sense of mischief at the precise moment of imbalance when what is commonly accepted finds itself called into question”.

 

Her photographs feature in major collections: the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), the Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the Kunsthaus in Zurich, the Musée Français de la Photographie, and the Musée Carnavalet.