Willy Ronis (August 4, 1910, Paris - September 12, 2009, Paris, France ) was one of those photographers that I like (as if I knew him... 🙄) I have always liked him, he was something like "the little brother" of a great series of photographers of his time that somehow I think overshadowed him and was not treated as it should (imagination is free), is what I feel, much is said about so many others but little, very little of Ronis, in fact, I think, he is a great unknown.

"Photography is the gaze. You either have it or you don't".

Coincidentally, the other day I came across on Facebook a photograph of Willy Ronis in color made in Rue St. Dominique in Paris in 1957, it caught my attention because I had also photographed that same street, almost from the same point but with a different perspective, different planes, different clothes, different cars, but many coincidences still in terms of existing buildings.

Ronis' photograph denoted the use of a Tele because of the compression of the shots and the way the tower was seen so close, so imposing in the image.

Photograph by Willy Ronis

Photograph by Pilar Silvestre

From the photograph, a small debate started where it was said that in Willy Ronis' books he had used a 200 mm lens at f16 to avoid losing the depth of field, that made me think about how underrated Ronis had been, in my opinion, and that I did not have any book of his, I decided to rediscover him as a photographer and expand my information about him and his work with a book that was worthwhile.

Since it was approaching Epiphany and I had not made any gift for myself I started to look for books about Ronis on the internet and I found this 600 pages and 4 kg of weight where there were not only 590 photographs of Ronis, but they were all dated, located and with a small explanation of Ronis about how he did it, the circumstances of the same and even if they carry some kind of cut or not, I thought it was just what I was looking for, not only was going to increase my photographic and cultural background about him, but also I could hear his opinion about his own photographs, so... the book fell!  

Willy Ronis by Willy Ronis. the master photographer's unpublished albums

And this is one of the reflections that I have published today, after receiving the book of Willy Ronis, I have been reading and watching his photos and I am sharing with you a conclusion I have reached (although I already had it clear, it is not new to me, it is a way to reaffirm it).

This conclusion was addressed to my Facebook group on street photography,  Street & Candid Photography Group , where for H or B black and white is used a lot, sometimes even abused ... is abused trying to move to black and white photos that do not need it, that was not intended to do so and that by leaving it in monochrome still more complicated reading.

Not only that, but for some strange reason it has become fashionable in photography to raise the tonal contrast (I'm not even talking about HDRs that we do not admit) with an obsession to highlight the detail as synonymous with a better photo, and we do not realize that this way of processing is detrimental in street photography and even makes the feeling of being a spontaneous photo disappears, especially when they are also linked to straightening techniques in the scene and are not necessary.

Sometimes the detail is such that we eliminate the depth in the photograph to bring all the shots forward, the blacks and whites lose their real tone, the grays are all similar and there is a mixture of shots that become impossible to read, to value, to comment because we would spend the day telling you to abandon this habit that I understand that it is very funny in principle when you find those presets that look cool in plugins like NIK and others, the street photo will require other tools to convey and the more elements the photo has the worse consequences for it.

It is necessary to work the black and white so that instead of harming us helps us, and there are no magic formulas, perhaps it is necessary to think more about the photo and its final result, the formula is simple, that is none other than trying to keep the planes in place with a black and white with an extensive range of grays and contrasts, the color is very difficult to deal with, but that does not mean that the black and white is easier, and separate the elements that you want to highlight in the images is essential.  After what I have said, letting everyone do what he wants is just a personal reflection that I consider necessary given the nature of the group. I leave you this example of Ronis.

With this photograph, I wanted to show and emphasize the way Ronis had of composing and using black and white. It is the tones and the contrast of tones that give us depth to the photograph with an extensive range of grays, the shots are perfectly separated from the first to the last without hindering its reading, and not only that but each and every one of the characters is completely defined without overlapping telling what was their task at that time, thus achieving a scene that is getting complicated by the number of elements is perfectly controlled by Ronis being a delight to be entertained in it. Just after publishing it I read the text of Ronis that appears to the left of the photo in French, which ultimately comes to tell the same thing that I have tried to explain in this writing, these conclusions are reached only by stopping to observe the photographs again and again, but for this, it is also necessary that we put the necessary means working our photographs and paying attention to the composition and the moment, and then dignify them even more with a good processing that helps to give interest and to keep the viewer's gaze.