A Salute to the Masters: Judo (A Tribute to Sabine Weiss)

This article is a tribute to the street and humanist photographer Sabine Weiss. Considered a living legend in street photography, she likes to photograph daily lives of people, trying to capture the emotions she recognizes around her. Weiss like to photograph people of all ages but she especially loves to take photos of children, masterfully immortalizing their spontaneous gestures and emotions. For this article, I was inspired by one of her rare sports photos of some children practicing judo. Do you want to know more about this great artist? Well, read on!

I came to know about the Swiss-French photographer Sabine Weiss (born in Switzerland in 1924 and became a naturalized French citizen in 1995) thanks to the magazine, “100 Photos Pour la Libertè de la Presse” and Edward Steichen’s famous book, “The Family of Man”. Weiss’ interest in photography started when she was a young girl. In fact, at only 12 years old, she began to photograph with a camera bought with savings from her pocket money. After studying photography in Geneva she moved to Paris in 1940, where she worked as an assistant to the fashion photographer Willy Maywald. Some years later, she began his career as a freelance photographer.

Also in Paris, Weiss made an acquaintance with the the great photographer Robert Doisneau who invited her to join the Rapho agency, of which Doisneau, Willy Ronis, and Edouard Boubat were members of. Here she took a series of street photography of daily life that are full of emotions. She paid great attention to facial expressions, body language, and gestures, as you can see here or on her portfolio.

Weiss should not be considered only a street photographer. In fact, she worked in various areas of the photographic art: she took many portraits of important musicians (like Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Pablo Casals), famous writers, sculptors, and painters (like Fernand Léger, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Alberto Giacometti), She also worked with some important fashion magazines and newspapers like Vogue. As part of her career, she travels the world as a photojournalist, publishing a great number of reportages for famous magazines like Paris Match, Life, and Newsweek.

For this tribute, I was inspired by one of Weiss’ rare photos depicting sports that I found in “100 Photos Pour la Libertè de la Presse (100 Photos for Press Freedom),” published by the non-profit association, “Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders)”. In this photo taken in France in 1983, you can see two children engaged in a judo lesson. Here, I’ll show you some photos that I took in my city, Como (or in the near city of Olgiate Comasco), of some young athletes who faced off in official competitions or public demonstrations of judo open to everyone who wanted to try this noble sport for the first time.

Some of Weiss’ photos are currently on exhibit in a collective exposition at Les Douches Gallery in New York until May 22, 2015. Don’t miss it!

A Salute to the Masters is a series dedicated to great photographers that I like. I posted other tributes for Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Helen Levitt, Ernst Haas, Stephen Shore, Gabriele Basilico, Robert Adams, Thomas Struth, J.H. Lartigue, Elliott Erwitt, Robert Frank, Gianni Berengo Gardin, André Kertész, Willy Ronis, Brassaï, Rodchenko, Dan Graham, Henry Grant, William Eggleston, Dennis Stock, Juergen Teller, Martin Parr, Peter Mitchell, Mario Giacomelli, David Burnett, Michael Williamson, Bernard Cahier, Harry Gruyaert, Bruno Barbey, Paul Strand, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lothar Rübelt, David Goldblatt, Henry Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Depardon, Aaron Siskind, Mario de Biasi and Izis Bidermanas. I especially love street photography and urban architectural photography.

written by sirio174 on 2015-04-18 #lifestyle #children #street-photography #paris #judo #regular-contributor #a-salute-to-the-masters #sabine-weiss #social-photography