Entre Les Murs

Willy Ronis Exhibition

Janet and I went to an exhibit of Willy Ronis' photographs today, on display at the Paris Hotel de Ville. He is best known for his work in the decades before and after the war. His post-war pictures of Paris are particularly admired for the way in which they have captured the hopeful spirit of reconstruction.


So well known are these black and white shots of happy, young Parisians at work and play that it does make me reflect: is the artist merely reporting this spark, this essence of Paris? Or is he in fact, in the act of observing it, affecting it, and perhaps even creating something? The mirror-up-to-life view is that the artist is clearing away the clutter and allowing us to see to the heart of some human truth, in this case the bold spirit of building a bright future that characterized Paris in the post war years. But there is so much going on in any given society at any given time and place. Isn't it likely too that that perspective we have is simply one of many possible, and we happen to hold it because of these photographs (and other complementary work) that for whatever reason became widely known? Does the artist chip away the stone to reveal the elephant hidden within, or does he or she in fact choose to create that elephant out of the material?

This is not to suggest that the hopeful spirit comes to us only through Ronis' work. It's of course a much more complex interplay of influences - artistic and social forces feeding and interacting with each other. And it must be noted that Ronis' work shows many different views of life in Paris throughout the last eighty years, including the political and commercial, dreary and banal.

posted 4.2.06