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Martine Franck (2 April 1938 – 16 August 2012) was a British-Belgian
documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...
and
portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...
photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...
. She was a member of Magnum Photos for over 32 years. Franck was the second wife of
Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson (; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) was a French artist and Humanist photography, humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 135 film, 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street ...
and co-founder and president of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.


Early life

Franck was born in
Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
to the Belgian banker Louis Franck and his British wife, Evelyn. After her birth the family moved almost immediately to London. A year later, her father joined the
British army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
, and the rest of the family were evacuated to the United States, spending the remainder of the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
on
Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...
and in
Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
. Franck's father was an amateur art collector who often took his daughter to galleries and museums. Franck was in
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
from the age of six onwards, and her mother sent her a postcard every day, frequently of paintings. Ms. Franck, attended Heathfield School, an all-girls boarding school close to Ascot in England, and studied the history of art from the age of 14. "I had a wonderful teacher who really galvanized me," she says. "In those days she took us on outings to London, which was the big excitement of the year for me."


Career

Franck studied art history at the University of Madrid and at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris. After struggling through her thesis (on French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and the influence of cubism on
sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
), she said she realized she had no particular talent for writing, and turned to photography instead. In 1963, Franck's photography career started following trips to the Far East, having taken pictures with her cousin’s Leica camera. Returning to France in 1964, now possessing a camera of her own, Franck became an assistant to photographers Eliot Elisofon and Gjon Mili at ''
Time-Life Time Life, Inc. (also habitually represented with a hyphen as Time-Life, Inc., even by the company itself) was an American multi-media conglomerate company formerly known as a prolific production/publishing company and Direct marketing, direct ...
.'' By 1969 she was a busy freelance photographer for magazines such as '' Vogue,'' ''
Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...
'' and ''
Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...
,'' and the official photographer of the Théâtre du Soleil (a position she held for 48 years). From 1970 to 1971 she worked in Paris at the Agence Vu photo agency, and in 1972 she co-founded the Viva agency. In 1980, Franck joined the Magnum Photos cooperative agency as a "nominee", and in 1983 she became a full member. She was one of a very small number of women to be accepted into the agency. In 1983, she completed a project for the now-defunct French Ministry of Women's Rights and in 1985 she began collaborating with the non-profit International Federation of Little Brothers of the Poor. In 1993, she first traveled to the Irish island of
Tory A Tory () is an individual who supports a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalist conservatism which upholds the established social order as it has evolved through the history of Great Britain. The To ...
where she documented the tiny Gaelic community living there. She also traveled to
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...
and
Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...
, and with the help of Marilyn Silverstone photographed the education system of the Tibetan Tulkus monks. In 2003 and 2004 she returned to Paris to document the work of theater director Robert Wilson who was staging La Fontaine's fables at the Comédie Française.Magnumphotos
/ref> Nine books of Franck's photographs have been published, and in 2005 Franck was made a chevalier of the French
Légion d'Honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...
. Franck continued working even after she was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2010. Her last exhibition was in October 2011 at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. The exhibit consisted of 62 portraits of artists "coming from somewhere else” collected from 1965 through 2010. This same year, there were collections of portraits shown at New York's Howard Greenberg Gallery and at the Claude Bernard Gallery, Paris.


Work

Franck was well known for her documentary-style photographs of important cultural figures such as the painter
Marc Chagall Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; – 28 March 1985) was a Russian and French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with the School of Paris, École de Paris, as well as several major art movement, artistic styles and created ...
, philosopher
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...
and poet
Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...
, and of remote or marginalized communities such as Tibetan Buddhist monks, elderly French people, and isolated Gaelic speakers. Michael Pritchard, the Director-General of the Royal Photographic Society, observed: "Martine was able to work with her subjects and bring out their emotions and record their expressions on film, helping the viewer understand what she had seen in person. Her images were always empathetic with her subject." In 1976, Frank took one of her most iconic photos of bathers beside a pool in Le Brusc, Provence. By her account, she saw them from a distance and rushed to photograph the moment, all the while changing the roll of film in her camera. She quickly closed the lens just at the right moment, when happened to be most intense. She cited as influences the portraits of British photographer
Julia Margaret Cameron Julia Margaret Cameron (; 11 June 1815 – 26 January 1879) was an English photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her Soft focus, soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian era, ...
, the work of American photojournalist Dorothea Lange and American documentary photographer
Margaret Bourke-White Margaret Bourke-White (; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) was an American documentary photography, documentary photographer and photojournalist. She was known as an architectural and commercial photographer for the first half of her career, ...
. In 2010, she told ''The New York Times'' that photography "suits my curiosity about people and human situations." She worked outside the studio, using a 35 mm Leica camera, and preferring
black and white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...
film. The British
Royal Photographic Society The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is the world's oldest photographic society having been in continuous existence since 1853. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as th ...
has described her work as "firmly rooted in the tradition of French humanist documentary photography."


Personal life

Franck was often described as elegant, dignified and shy. In 1966, she met Henri Cartier-Bresson, thirty years her senior, when she was photographing Paris fashion shows for ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
.'' In 2010, she told interviewer
Charlie Rose Charles Peete Rose Jr. (born January 5, 1942) is an American journalist and talk show host. From 1991 to 2017, he was the host and executive producer of the talk show ''Charlie Rose (talk show), Charlie Rose'' on PBS and Bloomberg L.P., Bloombe ...
"his opening line was, ‘Martine, I want to come and see your contact sheets.’" They married in 1970, had one child, a daughter named Mélanie, and remained together until his death in 2004. Throughout her career Franck, who was sometimes described as a feminist, was uncomfortable being in the shadow of her famous husband and wanted to be recognized for her own work. In 1970, the
Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...
in London planned to stage Franck's first solo exhibition: when she saw that the invitations included her husband's name and said he would be present at the launch, she cancelled the show. Franck once said that she put her husband's career ahead of her own. In 2003 Franck and her daughter launched the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation to promote Cartier-Bresson's photojournalism, and in 2004 Franck became its president. Franck was diagnosed with
leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...
in 2010, and died in Paris in 2012 at 74 years old.


Publications

* ''Martine Franck: Dun jour, l'autre''. France: Seuil, 1998. * ''Tibetan Tulkus, images of continuity''. London: Anna Maria Rossi & Fabio Rossi Publications, 2000. *''Tory Island Images''. Wolfhound Press, 2000. * ''Martine Franck Photographe'', Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris-Musées/Adam Biro, 2002. * ''Fables de la Fontaine'' (production by Robert Wilson), Actes Sud. Paris, 2004 * ''Martine Franck: One Day to the Next''. Aperture, 2005. * ''Martine Franck''. Louis Baring. London: Phaidon, 2007. * ''Martine Franck: Photo Poche''. France: Actes Sud, 2007. *''Women/Femmes'', Steidl, 2010. *''Venus d'ailleurs'', Actes Sud, 2011


Exhibitions

* ''La vie et la mort,'' Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France, 1980 * ''Martine Franck Photographe,'' Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris, 2004 * ''Les Rencontres,'' Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France, 2004


References


External links


Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

New York Times "Martine Franck's Pictures Within Pictures"

Martine Franck 1991 catalogue of Taipei Fine Art Museum, with the pencil painting of Henri Cartier-Bresson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Franck, Martine Magnum photographers 1938 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Belgian women artists 21st-century Belgian women artists 20th-century British women photographers 21st-century British women photographers 21st-century British photographers Deaths from leukemia in France Belgian people of British descent Belgian women photographers People educated at Heathfield School, Ascot Humanist photographers Women photojournalists Henri Cartier-Bresson 20th-century Belgian photographers 21st-century Belgian photographers