Willy Ronis

Les petits miracles de la vie

One of the great chroniclers of Parisian life in the 20th century

Produced in close cooperation with Willy Ronis and featuring images from his archives, this book traces the career of one of France’s most remarkable photographers, to whom, along with Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, and Brassaï, we owe our romantic vision of France. In Ronis’s photos of Paris, the city is inseparable from the working class men, women, and children who inhabit its streets and cafes. He once described his approach to photography in five words: "patience, thinking, chance, form, and time." Working with available light, Ronis sought to capture the fleeting moments of everyday life, and his body of work documents, with timeless beauty and grace, the feel of French life in the 20th century.

The author:
Jean Claude Gautrand, born in 1932, is one of France’s most distinguished experts on photography. An active photographer since 1960, he has also made a name for himself as a historian, journalist and critic, with numerous publications. He is the author of the TASCHEN books Paris mon amour (1999), Doisneau (2003), Brassaï (2004) and Ronis (2005).