1924 — 2021
Sabine Weiss was a Swiss-French photographer and pivotal figure in the French humanist school of the mid-twentieth century. In the late '40s and '50s, Weiss befriended Doisneau, Brassaï and Boubat as one of just two women at the Rapho agency in Paris (the other being Janine Niépce). She rapidly amassed an impressive body of work decidedly wide in scope: breathtaking street photography (such as Cheval, 1952, depicting an untethered black horse mid-canter at a deserted flea market) contrasted against commercial work and still life imagery for perfume brands and fashion designers. She was published in Vogue, Life and Paris Match, and by 1953 had been exhibited at MoMA in New York. A 1954 solo exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago went on to tour the USA.
Subjects of Weiss's portraits include Brigitte Bardot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and André Bretton. She favoured natural light where possible, adopting colour photography earlier than some of her humanist contemporaries (a number of whom would stick to black and white for the duration of their careers). In later life, she would say that it was the people she had interacted with, from all walks of life, who had made photography such a pleasurable pursuit, and she particularly enjoyed working with children. Published and exhibited countless times worldwide, Weiss may be among the most famous and the most celebrated of the many photographic artists who found fame in Paris in the twentieth century.
In 2017, Weiss donated her archive (including upwards of 200,000 negatives) to the Musée de l'Élysée in Lausanne. She died aged ninety-seven in 2021.
