The young woman looking at the camera with a half-smile, bangs and curious eyes while holding her Rolleiflex to take a self-portrait is photographer Sabine Weiss (Saint-Gingolph, Switzerland, 1924 – Paris, 2021). In this 1953 picture, his gesture shows the security of someone who has managed to devote himself to what he wanted. Previously, she was a girl who, encouraged by a mother who would take her to museums and art galleries, made the decision in her youth to devote herself to the task of telling the world through her camera.
Weiss learned the craft in a Geneva studio and went to the French capital in 1946, just 18 years old. There he worked as an assistant to fashion photographer Willy Maywald until Robert Doisneau – the author of the famous and groomed photograph of The Kiss – became aware of her work and presented it to the renowned photojournalism agency Rapho in 1952. It was the gateway to travel the world, portraying cultural and artistic figures and photographing people, especially children and the elderly, on the streets of the cities where he practiced his profession, especially in Paris.
More information
A hundred images from this creative journey, which has lasted more than half a century, are on view in Palafrugell (Girona) until October 9th in the main exhibition of the 12th Biennial of Xavier Miserach Photography. It is the first retrospective in Spain that Doisneau described as a “photographer of light and tenderness”.
“Self-Portrait” (1953). Sabina Weiss
Weiss, who was honored in 2021 at Arles Encounters, the most important visual arts exhibition in Europe, at the age of 97 had wished to attend the opening of her exhibition in Palafrugell entitled Observing life on July 30, but passed away on July 28 . December. “It’s an exhibition that was shown in France in 2011 and for which she herself chose the images, all in black and white,” says the director of the Biennial, Maria Planas, at the venue where it takes place, La Bòbila, an old Cork factory, reminder of a past when this wood industry was very powerful in Palafrugell. The biennial this newspaper was invited to has focused on documentary photography since its inception in 1999. This edition is supported by the City Council of Palafrugell, the Provincial Council of Girona, the Government of Catalonia and the Banco Sabadell Foundation.
‘Paris’, France, 1955. Sabine Weiss
“Girl and Tree”. Spain, 1981. Sabine Weiss
‘Bengal Light’, Naples (Italy), 1955. Sabine Weiss
‘Hungary’, 1982. Sabine Weiss
‘Young Miner’, Lens (France), 1955. Sabine Weiss
Photo of the painter and sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, Paris (France), 1958.“Self-Portrait” (1953). Sabina Weiss
“Woman on the Subway”, New York (USA), 1962. Sabine Weiss
‘The Little Egyptian’, 1983. Sabine Weiss
“Child”, Toledo (Spain), 1949. Sabine Weiss
“Françoise Sagan”, Paris (France), 1954. Sabine Weiss
“Terres au Curé Street”, Paris (France), 1952. Sabine Weiss
“Sabine has been in love with her job since she was young,” Planas continues, referring to a woman who once humorously explained: “Do things you like, like photography, but also do things to make a living deserve.” Weiss also felt love for people. In La Bòbila you can see this tenderness, his taste in capturing everyday street scenes, like young people kissing. It’s just an example of what the group of photographers she joined, the French humanists, wanted to convey, a label she wasn’t keen on, but one that recognizes her as the only woman besides Doisneau. Édouard Boubat, Willy Ronis and Israëlis Bidermanas, Izis, among others. At the end of the 1940s, everyone wanted to show that there was hope in life even in the ruins of World War II, a claim that was made very difficult by the images of the Nazi death camps.
Weiss had this humanistic gaze when photographing humble-looking elderly people or barefoot and dirty children on the street, always with dignity, sometimes smiling without delving into misery, which would have been easy. Among these images, the portrait of a miner’s boy from Lens stands out, the intense gaze of a beggar boy from Toledo with a blackened face, or the one entitled I am a horse, one of his favorites, also in Toledo, 1954 , in which four ragged little ones play while one of them is holding a stick in his mouth with a rope attached like a bridle. “I only photographed what I encountered on the street and what I liked,” sums up Weiss.
A visitor to the exhibition “Observing Life” dedicated to Sabine Weiss.David Borrat (EFE)
A few meters from the copies of children from different countries jumping, running, smoking and playing is a gallery of portraits of cultural figures, some of which he photographed for Vogue, where he worked in the 1950s. Later he collaborated with the best publications in Europe and the United States, the New York Times, Esquire, Life, Time… on fashion commissions, advertising and reports. Added to this was the opportunity to get closer to artists, thanks to her marriage in 1950 to the painter Hugh Weiss (from whom she took the surname, hers being Weber). Françoise Sagan posed with his typewriter in front of his lens, Samuel Beckett, Alberto Giacometti, Jeanne Moreau, Georges Bracque, Ella Fitzgerald, Ionesco with a surreal background of overturned chairs, or André Breton, who he placed on the left of the image to compose him the rest show the horror vacui of his apartment stuffed with objects. From the mid-1950s, practically until his death, he participated in group and solo exhibitions and in the publication of books. Today his works can be seen at the Georges Pompidou, the MoMA and the Met in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kyoto Museum of Modern Art…
The last part of the exhibition consists of snapshots in which games with shadows and reflections dominate almost always at night, such as El hombre que corre from 1953, in which an individual moves away quickly on a street paved and partially lit. “That man who was running was her husband,” explains Planas. Also of note is the facade of a two-story restaurant, where shadowy figures tell different stories in each window. And as a farewell, two more shadows on the floor form Weiss’ self-portrait with her husband, a token of love from a photographer who has combined all of her work with love for people.
Bengal Light, Naples (Italy), 1955. Sabine Weiss
A date with documentary photography
“La Guardia, Toledo”, photo by Català-Roca around 1960-61 CATALÀ-ROCA PHOTO COLLECTION / HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF THE COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTS OF CATALONIA
The Biennial of Xavier Miserach Photography bears the name of this Barcelona author, because “in the seventies he began to go to Palafrugell in the summer,” says Maria Planas, director of the competition. “He was very easy to get along with, he made friends, he bought a house nearby and when he died in 1998 those of us who knew him decided to honor him by organizing the Biennale.” In this 12th edition stands out alongside the Sabine Weiss exhibition, one by Francesc Català-Roca at the Cork Museum entitled Women, which exhibits the original frames in square format alongside some copies of his classics, most notably that the author from Valls (Tarragona) the fifties and sixties years with a lot of humor and irony. A total of about 80 photos of women of all ages and in different situations, but above all at work, from carrying water to working on the land, as a stenographer… Thus, this appointment to the celebrations of the 100th birthday of a teacher is added to the Spanish photography of the 20th century th century.
A different tone is offered by the images of women portrayed by Antoni Campañà, which belong to the so-called “red box”, the series of photos he had hidden because of the civil war and which one of his grandchildren found in his garage in 2018. “Campañà has worked on both sides of the conflict without taking sides,” says Planas. At Palafrugell’s Municipal Theater, a comparative exercise features militia women at the start of the conflict and Falangists at the end, all in Barcelona, respectively in Waving flags, and in similar gestures and attitudes, with some unpublished pieces, the Biennial completes its offer with talks, debates and film screenings.
All the culture that suits you awaits you here.
Subscribe to
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by our top critics in our weekly newsletter
GET IT
reduced by 50 percent
Subscribe to continue reading
read limitless