Today, we'll get to know the life and works of a lesser known, but highly influential photographer, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (1921 – 2004). He was a French photographer whose works typify the humanist impulse in that medium in his homeland of the period after World War II.
About him:
Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (1921-2004) was born to a highly artistic family. His father was a painter, his mother, a writer. Charbonnier first discovered photography in 1939 in the studio of the famous movie portraitist Sam Levin. He trained in the studios of White and Demilly, but World War II brought an abrupt halt to his emerging photography career, as he went to spend two years in Switzerland during the war.
At the end of 1944, he came back to France and worked as a typesetter with Libération and France-Soir. In 1950, Charbonnier went to work for Réalités as a photojournalist, where he collaborated with Édouard Boubat, who was also on staff. The position provided Charbonnier with the opportunity to travel to remote areas of the world, and to reveal through his photographs, the great state of change and upheaval in these regions. In 1970, he helped inaugurate the first Rencontres d'Arles, an important photo exhibition in Arles, France. In 1974, Charbonnier decided to leave Réalités, disillusioned with "standardization" he felt had come to dominate the world of photography.
His meeting with Agathe Gaillard marked a turning point in his career. Up until that point, he was more invested in a personal photograph. Now, released of the anguish of ordered work, he began to explore his nearby surroundings in Paris, capturing scenes from the neighborhood of Notre Dame with subjects that defined the Parisian allure. In regards to these images, he said, “I photographed all these people, not always without cruelty, certainly, but with an impassioned interest, with a lucid tenderness.” Many of these photographs were eventually exhibited at the Gallery Agathe Gaillard, as well as the Museum of the Elysium of Lausanne and the Nicéphore Niepce Museum, Chalon-sur-Saône. In 1983, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris put on a major retrospective of Charbonnier's work.
Charbonnier died on May 28, 2004 in Grasse, France. His lifelong friend Michel Kempf wrote regarding the legacy of Charbonnier’s work, “In a life of world tours, meeting with an entire generation of celebrities and meeting with just as many others torn from their anonymity in the 60th of a second that an exposure lasts, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier not just took his picture, he also told thousands upon thousands of stories.”
For more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ5gK8O7vuw
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