Une séance photo avec Willy Ronis

Exceptional complete autograph manuscript by Louis Aragon. 4 pages in pencil on 4 leaves numbered in his hand. Discrete trace of rust discharge on the first leaf and on the verso of the last. Horizontal fold across all leaves.
The article would be published under the title "L'Art de prendre une photo pour Les Lettres Françaises" (Regards, May 14, 1948).
Aragon accompanies the great Willy Ronis during a photographic session for a fashion portrait for Les Lettres Françaises. Following in Ronis's footsteps as he directs his spinning model, the writer takes us through four pages across an enchanting Paris where popular life and worldly elegance intermingle.
"The aim was to illustrate Le Nez au vent by Louis Chéronnet. The column's theme was: The Elegance of Paris is moving westward, and more specifically focused on avenue Montaigne" begins Aragon in his chronicle. For the duration of a day, the writer documents with fascination the photographer's work in one of his favorite settings: the streets of Paris. Several tableaux unfold in succession, in the Montorgueil quarter, at the milliner's, in Ronis's studio, on avenue Montaigne, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The key word, for both Aragon and Ronis, is movement. Photography is not static, nor are Aragon's impressions. We jump, like the model in the photographer's shots, from one place to another. The portrait of the elegant woman expands, under the writer's pen, to her surroundings, to the bubbling life of Paris that stops for an instant to contemplate the model's silhouette animated by the photographer's instructions.
Sixty years later, Ronis would remember that memorable day:


"[Aragon] had a very beautiful regard for photography. He knew what an image was. Elsa too. He had me work when he founded and directed Les Lettres françaises. I did several reports for him. The first small report was in 1947 or 48, a report on fashion on avenue Montaigne. Aragon came with me, we had chosen a model. I was a bit intimidated by Aragon, it was my first contact with him. I wanted to get the maximum from my model, I was working very hard because I was nervous. Seeing me work amused him so much that he didn't write the report about the model but about me working. I had seen him quite many times afterward, we used the familiar form with each other." (Willy Ronis, interview in Libération, September 14, 2009)


Their militant paths crossed on numerous occasions - Ronis contributed through his photographs to witness the social revolts that shook the 1930s while Aragon devoted many articles to them. In 1949, the photographer would follow the commemorative day of the Oradour-sur-Glane tragedy, in which nearly 400 artists participated at Aragon's initiative. He would also be the author of beautiful portraits of the Aragon-Triolet couple.
Excerpts from the manuscript:

Willy Ronis had arranged to meet me at 10:30, at the corner of rue Tiquetonne and rue Montorgueil. Apparently he was photographing athletes there. Ah! it was that restaurant where, in the past, we used to go eat with Vaillant-Couturier, and there were Action Française types who would shoot daggers at us with their eyes...
Instead of athletes, Willy was there, in his velvet jacket, with his spectacles, taking shots left and right, at the counter, of a couple of lovers. Sweet, the lovers... The little one, especially...
Perhaps it's a sport.
[...]
There is nothing more solemn than Caroline Reboux. It is the temple of hats. If he lived in our times, this is where Aristotle would write. Caroline Reboux herself made the bonnets for Nana and Eugénie de Montijo; at her place, Bel-Ami would twist his mustache while looking in the mirrors at the ladies trying on their headpieces... The English court was, for three reigns, hatted only by these hands... Finally, a photographer here is a scandal. I left mine in the antechamber.
Mademoiselle Paule, thank God, was there! Ah! if I could describe Mademoiselle Paule to you! She is magic, Mademoiselle Paule... One day, the Sardous of the future will stage Caroline Reboux, and Mademoiselle Lucienne, and Mademoiselle Paule... Meanwhile, how I wish I could show you the shop windows with the hats from before the flood, that is to say those from 1900 or 1910, Réjane's hat for the opening night of Alsace, or if it's not that one... She understood me immediately.
[...]
Marvel of spring, avenue Montaigne. This avenue that runs from Lalique's fountains to a Bourdelle statue. Paris's beautiful weather clings to the heavy white flowers of the chestnut trees. The asphalt is clean as a new penny, and in front of the houses, consulates, ministries, luxury shops, hotels, and that carriage entrance from which British soldiers emerge, there are little gardens in planters, railings and spindle trees, here lilacs, there luxury shops... From which end to approach this devil of an avenue, so as not to give free advertising to anyone, neither to this lingerie shop, nor to this couturier, nor to Kodak, nor to the Spanish ballets of this gypsy who has just arrived?
Willy Ronis stages Mademoiselle X... In front of a door, between two beds of spindle trees. Come on, turn around, let the dress fly and let me capture you in movement. A funny half-turn to the right, not very military. The idea is to land in front of the lens. No, Mademoiselle, with more abandon... I'm capturing you in movement... Some gaiety, Mademoiselle, some joy... Willy Ronis shows how to do it, he pivots his shoulder blades in his velvet jacket. And people stop, a postman comes out of the carriage entrance, the concierge, in the doorway, shakes a cloth... A West Indian woman watches Mademoiselle X..., she is of all colors, she, no drama about the shoes...
[...] While Mademoiselle X... pirouettes and her dress blooms like a flower, if you could see the ghostly air of the sewer worker, not at all classic, who descends into the manhole: a red-haired ghost who resembles my friend the painter Pignon, with a sweater with yellow and green horizontal stripes, straight from Sing-Sing...
But Willy Ronis is insatiable. We return in front of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, with its bas-reliefs, we ask a young man dressed in battle-dress to clear off from the only sunny bench, and here it's another story. Mademoiselle X... must climb on the bench and jump from it, while Willy crouched captures her from below. Come now, come now mademoiselle, some joy, some freedom... You should see Willy Ronis, his glasses on his nose, miming the affair by throwing his arms in all directions...
[...]
I went to collect the photograph around 3:30 PM at Willy's, at Sèvres-Lecourbe, a small house whose staircase is decorated with fishing nets. The embarrassment of choice. Before the wet contact prints, Willy Ronis prefers this proof because of the movement. [...] And it's at the stone that I find Morgan, Daix and Marcenac. The photo where Mademoiselle X... jumps from the bench almost won — it's more Giraudoux-like, it's true. But it's about Chéronnet's article, and in the end it's the photographer's choice that triumphs: elegance is moving westward...
Truth be told, Mademoiselle X... was leaving the west sidewalk of avenue Montaigne, between a Buick and a Cadillac, full sail toward the east... But still, the demonstration is made: and from the Palais Royal where Restif de la Bretonne dreamed, Paris chic has scarpered to rue Montaigne [...]

In postwar Paris, Aragon delivers a superb portrait of a genius portraitist: Willy Ronis.