Jean Dieuzaide

1921 — 2003

Jean Dieuzaide was a French photographer and photojournalist, whose work sometimes had an abstract, highly stylised or absurdist edge. During World War II, he took pictures while serving in training camps, and later signed his work by his resistance nickname, Yan. Following the war, Dieuzaide took an official portrait of Charles de Gaulle, then a military general, and in 1953 shot an iconic picture of Salvador Dalí swimming in Catalonia, with daisies in his moustache. A year later, Dieuzaide sat atop the shoulder of a man walking a tightrope to take the wedding portrait of a bride and groom who were both tightrope artists — an extreme example of the typically humorous touch for which Dieuzaide became known. 

He was also a member of the fifteen-strong Le Groupe des XV, the humanist photography collective founded in 1946, and had many commercial interests, sometimes shooting for travel magazines. During the seventies he converted Le château d'eau, a water tower and historic monument near Toulouse, into an art and photographic gallery. Dieuzaide won many prizes over the course of his career, including the inaugural Niépce Prize in 1955, and was knighted in France at the age of forty-five. He died in 2003. The gallery at Le château d'eau remains open today.