Death of photographer Janine Niépce
Photographer Janine Niépce, one of France’s first female reporters, died on Sunday 5 August 2007.
Photo taken during his last course for Spéos on 10 July 2007
The photographer Janine Niépce, a distant cousin of the inventor of photography Nicéphore Niépce, died on Sunday 5 August in Paris at the age of 86. Janine Niépce chose to capture ordinary people and their daily lives in black and white, a style that brought her close to Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis.
Born into a family of Burgundy winegrowers who went on to make aircraft and then film sets, she joined the Resistance and then studied art and archaeology, but became passionate about photography.
She became a professional photographer in 1946, becoming one of the first female reporters.
Influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who gave her sound advice on becoming a reporter, she joined Rapho in 1955. In the second half of the 20th century, her photos retrace fifty years of changes in the status of women, as well as the disappearing farming industry, the carefree days of the Trente Glorieuses and May 1968. A feminist, she helped found the Family Planning Movement in the 1950s.
She has written several books: France, with texts by Marguerite Duras (1992), Les années femmes (1993), Mes années campagne (1995), Les vendanges (2000) and Françaises, Françaises, le goût de vivre, with historian Jacques Marseille (2005). Janine Niépce was a chevalier des Arts et des Lettres and chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, and a member of Gens d’image, UPC and ANJRPC for 40 years.
