Thursday, September 27, 2018

Venice: La Casa dei Tre Oci – Willy Ronis – Photographs 1934-1998 – Exhibition and Party Photos

 
La Casa dei Tre Oci
Willy Ronis – Photographs 1934-1998
La Casa dei Tre Oci is paying tribute to the great French photographer Willy Ronis (1910-2009). Curated by Matthieu Rivallin and produced together with the Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Mediathèque de l’architecture et dupatrimoine, Ministere de la Culture, with the participation of the Fondazine di Venezia, and organized by Civita Tre Venezie, until January 6, the exhibition presents 120 vintage images, among which about 10 previously un-exhibited ones devoted to Venice, which range over the whole career of one of the major interpreters of twentieth century photography and a protagonist of the French humanist tradition.

The Bastille Lovers – Paris – 1957
Emanuela Bassetti and Denis Curti

 



Self-Portrait in My Father’s Studio 13 Boulevard Voltaire – Paris 1935
Destined for a career as a violinist, Willy Ronis started working in his father’s local photographic studio; besieged by creditors he abandoned it when his father died in 1936. Encouraged by his friends Robert Capa and David Seymour, he became a reporter-photographer and the euphoric witness of the Popular Front coalition in France.

 
Curator - Matthieu Rivallin

 

Francois Cali – Sortileges de Paris – Paris – Arthaud
1962 – publication
Through his images, Ronis developed a kind of series of micro-tales, with their starting point in the people and situations found on the streets and in everyday life and that led him to be captivated by reality and to observe the fraternity of peoples.

 
Aubagne – France – 1947


Italo and Laura Zannier

  Willy Ronis, Ministere de la Culture / Mediatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine /Dist RMN-GP copyright Donation Willy Ronis – courtesy Tre Oci

Vincent sur la route des vacances – 1946


Le Petit Parisien – 1952
Emma Morosi

 
Holiday Camp – Marsac – France – 1937
Jeanne and Jacques near Paris – 1937



Luca De Michelis

 Willy Ronis, Ministere de la Culture / Mediatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine /Dist RMN-GP copyright Donation Willy Ronis – courtesy Tre Oci

 Willy Ronis – Fondamenta Nuove – Venice - 1959 

 
Venice – Original Contact Prints – 1938
In 1938 Willy Ronis found a job as a photographer on a cruise ship.  The ship stopped off in Venice where the photographer took the opportunity to discover the town with his Rolleflex.  Although he was awarded the Gold Medal at the Biennale di Fotografia in 1957, he only returned to Venice again in 1959 invited by critic Romeo Martinez.  He took advantage of this trip to make some of his most famous images of working class neighborhoods.  Playing with the Venetian light, he captured solitary characters, a man with a Panama in front of a shoemaker’s shop or the silhouette of a little girl on a jetty standing out in the twilight.



Calle della Bissa – Venice – 1959


Volendam – The Netherlands – 1954

   
Drinks and Music in the Courtyard

 Willy Ronis, Ministere de la Culture / Mediatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine /Dist RMN-
GP copyright Donation Willy Ronis – courtesy Tre Oci

“All the attention is fixed on a unique moment, almost too good to be true, which can evaporate in the next second and provokes a feeling that is impossible to obtain using staged artifices.”
Willy Ronis – June 1956

Willy Ronis – Place Vendome – Paris – 1947

 
Lou Embo Roiter


 Willy Ronis, Ministere de la Culture / Mediatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine /Dist RMN-
GP copyright Donation Willy Ronis – courtesy Tre Oci

Willy Ronis – Le Nu Provencal – Gordes – 1949


Jean Blanchaert


Pit 10 - Courrieres near Lens – Pas-de-Calais - France – 1951
Miner suffering from Silicosis – Lens – France -1951
If it is true that Ronis’s photos correspond to a certain extent to an optimistic vision of the human condition, he never tried to hide social injustice, and he was deeply interested in the poorest classes.  His sensitivity in the face of everyday battles for survival in a precarious professional, familial, and social context, reveals that his political convictions as a militant communist led him to active involvement through the production and circulation of images of the workers’ condition and battles. 
   
Rue Laurence-Savart – Menilmontant – Paris -1948
Willy Ronis, Ministere de la Culture / Mediatheque de l’architecture et du patrimoine /Dist RMN-
GP copyright Donation Willy Ronis – courtesy Tre Oci

Willy Ronis – Usine Lorraine-Escaut – Sedan – 1959


La Casa dei Tre Oci
Willy Ronis – Photographs 1934-1998
Even though the greater part of Ronis’s most reproduced images were shot in France, from his youth on wards he continued to travel and photograph other places. His style remained intimately linked to his experiences and his way of thinking about photography. In fact he never hesitated to evoke his own life and his political and sociological context. His images and his texts tell of an artist who first of all wanted to explore the world, secretly spying on it, and patiently waiting for it to reveal its mysteries. To his eyes it was more important to receive the images than to go in search of them, to absorb the external world rather than to capture it and, from this point, to construct its story. 
Dinner in the Garden and Library
Drinks and dinner were served in the library and the garden of the De Michelis’s residence in Venice on a warm summer’s night.
Hosts - Emanuela Bassetti, Luca and Giulia De Michelis
 
  Silvia Dainese, Paola Marini, Laura and Italo Zannier
Giandomenico Romanelli and Ziva Kraus
 
Cristiana Costanzo and Ezio Micelli 
 
Silvia Dainese, Giulio Manieri Elia and Roberta Battaglia
 
Ambretta Senes
   
Federica Olivares, Emanuela Venturini and Carlotta Sapori

 Lorenza Zanuso and Denis Curti
Stefano Gris and Marino Folin
 
 Chiara Valerio and Marcella Libonati
Mario Lupano and Maria Luisa Frisa
 
Roberto De Feo and Adele Re Rebaudengo with Freya

  Good Night