Willy Ronis
[Photographer, b. 1910, Montmartre, Paris, d. 2009, Paris.]
We do not see what is “real,” we see what we are.
I have never sought out the extraordinary or the scoop. I looked for what complemented my life. The beauty of the ordinary was always the source of my greatest emotions.
I have never sought the unexpected, the novelty, the extraordinary, but rather what is most typical of our daily life... I go out to find people who resemble me, and the mirror which these images offer them is the same as that in which I see myself.
I have never separated form and content. The photo should have a meaning. But my photos are also more or less well constructed. If they had false notes, they stayed on the contact sheet.
Most of my photographs were taken on the spur of the moment, very quickly, just as they occurred. All attention focuses on the specific instant, almost too good to be true, which can only vanish in the following one.