Signed Willy Ronis - Toutes Belle + Nue - 1992-2008

Two books of female nudes by Willy Ronis, one of which, 'Toutes belles,' is signed on the title page (a unique copy not found signed online).

"All Beautiful." Hoëbeke, 1992. 32.5 x 24.5 cm., 92 pages and 69 black-and-white photographs, with a list of illustrations at the end of the book, text in French by Régine Deforges. Black imitation cloth hardcover with illustrated dust jacket.

2. Nudes. Editions Terre Bleue, 2008. 27 x 25 cm., 136 pages and 58 black and white photographs printed on the recto only, text by Philippe Sollers, and at the end of the book, a photographic index with miniature reproductions. Beige hardcover with a cloth-like imitation binding, with the title embossed in tone-on-tone, on the cover and spine, illustrated dust jacket with a band (OBI).

Willy Ronis, the humanist photographer, has brought our century to light. 'The Provençal Nude' made him known worldwide. Through these images, lovingly illuminated, Willy Ronis's women are beautiful, all of them beautiful.
He didn't only photograph his wife. Throughout his life, by chance encounters and requests, he photographed nudes. 'The beauty of the female body has always impressed me,' he said in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur at the time of the release of Nues, a book created with Philippe Sollers. And he was able to capture the beauty of these female bodies with great respect and delicacy. In 2001, he decided to stop professional photography. In 2002, struck by arthritis, he ceased taking photographs. His last shot is a nude featured in the book Nues, published in 2008. The great photographer died at 99 years old. He had told Bernard Geniès the story of his 'Nudes.'
Is N. O. Le nu a photographic genre for you?
W. Ronis. I didn't practice it as such. Even though I have a fairly linear background, I never considered myself a themed photographer. These nudes, I took them over the years without worrying about whether they belonged to a specific category or not. Most of them were taken almost spontaneously. I knew most of the women who posed for me; they could be acquaintances or friends. But I was sometimes approached.
N. O. How so?
W. Ronis. Women have sometimes asked me to pose nude for me.
N.O. You didn't know them?
W. Ronis. Yes, that happened to me. In 1981, at the opening of one of my exhibitions in New York, a woman approached me. She worked at an embassy and asked me to photograph her nude. I agreed. For the book, I changed her first name and called her Isabelle.

Willy Ronis spontaneously finds the moral point, the place, the lighting, the position of the model which allows him, faced with sometimes immodest bodies, to avoid falling into any of the traps of the exercise: the ethereal or the trivial.

To view the photographic series in full screen, double-click on a photograph, then you can return to the standard display at any time.

Copies in excellent condition, practically like new (on the front title page of *Toutes Belles*, a "Press Service" stamp). Books from my personal collection, carefully preserved. Secure shipping with reinforced packaging and guaranteed international tracking. For multiple purchases, combined shipping is available with a refund of any overpaid postage via PayPal.

2 kg. excluding packaging