This exhibition is dedicated to one of the most internationally famous French photographers: Willy Ronis.

It presents his most well-known photographs, as well as less known ones.

According to Willy Ronis, ‘Photography is emotion’. One of the last representatives of the French humanist school of photography, along with figures like Robert Doisneau, Izis and Sabine Weiss. Many of Ronis’s best-known photographs are micro-narratives, portraying men and women, on the street, in ordinary, everyday activities. Today, these images, now considered to be iconic in the history of photography, translate less a specific moment in time immortalized by the photographer, than a particular way of representing a utopian humanistic vision.

Willy Ronis also portrays social injustice and focuses on the underprivileged classes of society. His sensitivity reveals their daily struggles in a precarious professional, familial and social environment.

In his photographs and texts, we discover a photographer keen to explore the world, observing all those around him, and patiently waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. For Ronis, the art of photography was about receiving images rather than looking for them; absorbing the surrounding environment rather than capturing it, and using this to create his own narrative.

Exhibition co-produced by the Jeu de Paume, Paris and the Médiathèque de l’architecture et du patrimoine, ministère de la Culture, France.