La photographie humaniste, 1945-1968, Izis, Boubat, Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis, catalogue d’exposition (book)

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La photographie humaniste / Humanist photography, 1945-1968, Izis, Boubat, Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis (book) Exhibition catalog. Editors: Françoise Denoyelle, Dominique Versavel, Laure Beaumont-Maillet. Published by Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Paris – 2006. Like new condition. 182 pages. In French.

Around a few so-called “humanist” photographers who have become very famous (Izis, Boubat, Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis…), more than sixty very talented reporter-illustrators have worked and deserve to be in the spotlight.

It was between the end of the Second World War and the 1960s that humanist photography reached its peak. It is so named because it places the human person at the center of its message, in both its professional and emotional context. There we find famous names like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Brassaï or Boubat, but also lesser known photographers like Georges Viollon, Édith Gérin or Pierre Belzeaux. All share an essentialist and lyrical vision of man and are based on the idea of a universal human nature. Their movement, born in the 1930s, in close connection with the rise of the illustrated press and the improvement of portable devices, spread across Europe and as far as the United States. What it evokes today is first of all a mythical image of France and in particular of Paris. However, these photographs also constitute valuable testimony to this period of the reconstruction and modernization of France after the war. With a great diversity of perspectives that is well highlighted by the exhibition devoted to them by the BNF, they contribute, among other things, to the construction of a national image.