The photos of Sabine Weiss on display in Venice
Among the major representatives of French humanist photography along with Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Edouard Boubat, Brassaï and Izis, Weiss was the only post-war female photographer to have practiced this profession for so long and in all fields of photography, ranging from reportage to portraits of artists, from fashion to street photography, to numerous trips around the world.
Edited by Virginie Chardin, the retrospective is promoted by the Venice Foundation, created by Marsilio Arte in collaboration with the Berggruen Institute, produced by the Sabine Weiss studio in Paris and by Laure Delloye-Augustins, with the support of Jeu de Paume and the International Festival Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, the exhibition presents about 200 photographs to the public. An exhibition itinerary that Weiss helped build, opening her personal archives, conservatories in Paris.
The shots, exhibited from 11 March to 23 October 2022, including several unpublished – such as the series dedicated to asylums, created during the winter of 1951-1952 in France in the Cher department, and which has remained unpublished to this day – retrace together to various publications and magazines of the time, Weiss’s entire career, from his beginnings in 1935 to the 1980s. From the beginning, Sabine Weiss, as shown in the photos of children and passers-by, directs her lens on bodies and gestures, immortalizing emotions and feelings, in line with French humanist photography. It is an approach from which she will never deviate, as can be seen from her words: “To be powerful, a photograph must speak of an aspect of the human condition, make us feel the emotion that the photographer felt in front of his subject”.
The exhibition itinerary
Born Weber in Saint-Gingolph, Switzerland, on July 23, 1924, Sabine, who will take the surname of her husband, the painter Hugh Weiss (Philadelphia, 1925 – Paris, 2007), approaches photography at a young age. You do an apprenticeship with the Boissonnas, a dynasty of photographers who have worked in Geneva since the end of the 19th century. In 1946 she Geneva for Paris and becomes the assistant of Willy Maywald, German photographer leaves in fashion and portraits. When she Hugh she marries her, in 1950, she embarks on a career as an independent photographer. Together, they move into a small Parisian studio, where Weiss still lives, and frequent the postwar art scene.
One of the main nuclei of the review “Sabine Weiss. The poetry of the moment “ it tells the story of the 1950s, the moment of the photographer’s international recognition. In 1952, in fact, her career took a decisive turn when she joined the Rapho agency, on the recommendation of Robert Doisneau. From 1953 onwards, her photographs were published by major international newspapers such as “Picture Post”, “Paris Match”, “Vogue”, “Le Ore”, “The New York Times”, “Life”, “Newsweek”. In the same year Weiss took part in the “Post War European Photography” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) and in 1954 the Art Institute of Chicago dedicated an important solo exhibition to her. In 1955 three of her shots were chosen by Edward Steichen for the historical anthology “The Family of Man”, at the MOMA in New York.
From 1952 to 1961 Sabine Weiss collaborated, alongside photographers such as William Klein, Henry Clarke and Guy Bourdin, with Rowingcreating some memorable fashion shoots, of which vivid color shots are on display together with about fifteen original issues of the famous magazine.
A section of the itinerary is then dedicated to his portraits of painters, sculptors, actors and musicians. For five years, Hugh Weiss is the mentor of the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, while Sabine is close to Annette Giacometti, the wife of the great sculptor Alberto. On display there is no shortage of their portraits alongside those of other personalities such as Robert Rauschenberg, Françoise Sagan, Romy Schneider, Ella Fitzgerald, Simone Signoret and Brigitte Bardot.
America, reached in 1955 on the ocean liner Freedom in the company of her husband Hugh, impresses her strongly, and the shots taken in New York in its streets teeming with detail, from the Bronx to Harlem, from Chinatown to Ninth Avenue, are publications from New York Times in a large report entitled “The New Yorkers (and Washington) of a Parisian”. These are images that tell America from a French point of view, with a strong humor, many of which are exhibited only today, for the first time in Italy, on the occasion of the exhibition.
The itinerary also reserves ample space for the works carried out since the 1980s, at the age of sixty, during his travels to Portugal, India, Burma, Bulgaria and Egypt.
In addition to the photographs, some excerpts from documentary films dedicated to her will also be presented (“La Chambre Noire” in 1965; “Sabine Weiss” in 2005; “My work as a photographer” in 2014) in which the photographer recounted, in different periods of her life, her artistic career, her travel experiences and the difficulty of being a female photographer.
The catalog, published by Marsilio Artoffers many unpublished images, the texts of Virginie Chardin, curator of the exhibition, and Denis Curti, artistic director of the Casa dei Tre Oci.