Izis

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Izis (real name Israëlis Bidermanas ; born January 17, 1911 in Marijampolė , Lithuania ; † May 16, 1980 in Paris ) was a Lithuanian - French photographer .

life and work

Israëlis Bidermanas, known as "Izis", was already enthusiastic about painting and photography as a boy. At the age of 13 he left the Hebrew school and began to travel to different countries with only a camera and few belongings. On the run from anti-Semitism , he finally arrived in Paris in 1930 without identity papers, money or knowledge of French. There he first worked in a traditional photo studio. In 1933 he opened his own very successful studio in the working-class district of the 13th arrondissement , which he ran until the Wehrmacht occupied Paris . During the Second World War he fled to Ambazac , a small town near Limoges , where he was captured by Germany. With the liberation of Limoges by the Resistance in 1944 , he joined the Maquis around Colonel Georges Guingouin as a photographer and resistance fighter . After the war, Izis returned to Paris, where he worked as a freelance journalist for Regards , a weekly newspaper of the Communist Party, and made friends with artists, painters and writers of his time. He was especially close friends with Marc Chagall and Jacques Prévert . Prévert contributed many texts to Izis' photo books. In 1946, Izis had his first solo exhibition. From 1949 on he worked as a press photographer for Paris Match , which was founded in the same year , for which he made numerous photo reports for 20 years, for example of the young Grace Kelly , who had just arrived in France, or of Arman , Jean Cocteau , Colette , Gina Lollobrigida , Roland Petit , Édith Piaf , Orson Welles and many other people of the time. In 1951 he published his first book: Paris des Rêves (Paris of Dreams). 1952–54, his photographic travelogue from Israel , which reflects the optimism of the newly founded country, attracted great attention. His photo series of the Kasbah in Algiers in 1953 and city scenes from the reawakening of post-war London are also well known.

As a photographer, Izis was a loner who was connected to poetic realism and who stayed apart from the then popular Parisian photography association Groupe des XV , which is probably why he gained less prominence than his contemporaries Boubat , Brassaï , Robert Doisneau or Willy Ronis . Best known are Izis' black and white photographs of fairs, circuses and public places in Paris in the 1950s, which exude a surreal poetic melancholy. Jacques Prévert described Izis as “astonished passers-by.” The photographer himself commented: “The people I photograph don't even notice me because they are usually completely absorbed in their inner world, their dreams.” For his subjects he preferred to look for people in poorer districts who, as he said, "are unmistakably marked by life."

Photographs

(Selection of external web links)

Exhibitions

  • Izis à travers les archives photographiques de Paris Match. 1949-1969 - Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi (until 2008)
  • Hôtel de Ville: Paris des Rêves, January 20 to May 29, 2010

bibliography

  • Paris des Rêves (Paris of Dreams) together with Jacques Prévert, Desch, Munich 1958
  • Le Grand Bal du Printemps (When Spring Comes in Paris) together with Jacques Prévert, Paris 1958
  • Marc Chagall's world. Belser, Stuttgart 1968
  • Izis: Captive Dreams - Photographs, 1944-80. Foreword by Marie de Thézy, Thames & Hudson Ltd, ISBN 0-500-54185-X (English)

literature

  • Annie-Laure Wanaverbecq: Izis à travers les archives photographiques de Paris Match, 1949–1969. Filipacchi, 2007, ISBN 978-2-85018-930-2 (French)
  • Dominique Versavel: La Photographie humaniste, 1945-1968: Autour d'Izis, Boubat, Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis… Bibliothèque nationale, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-7177-2367-6 (French)
  • Hans-Michael Koetzle: photographer A-Z . Taschen, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3836-55433-6

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Michel Frizot: New History of Photography. Könemann, 1998, pp. 624f., ISBN 3-8290-1327-2
personal data
SURNAME Izis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bidermanas, Israëlis (maiden name); Bidermanas, Izis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lithuanian-French photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Marijampolė , Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1980
Place of death Paris