The stunning photos of everyday life

An exhibition in Paris celebrates the work of Martine Franck, who captured women’s struggle for equality and created tender portraits of the elderly, writes Cath Pound.

Martine Franck was one of the most renowned female photographers of the 20th Century. A co-founder of the Viva Agency, she went on to become one of the very few female full members of the legendary photographic co-operative, Magnum.  Known for being gracious, kind and shy, she also had a hidden tenacity that allowed her to free herself from the constraints of her gender and background. Her work embraced portraiture, landscape photography and reportage, and her subject matter ranged from the struggle for female emancipation to sympathetic portrayals of the elderly.

Born into a wealthy Antwerp family who were avid art enthusiasts and collectors, Franck had studied art history and thought she might become a curator. But a lengthy trip around Asia with her friend Ariane Mnouchkine, a highly unusual undertaking for two young women at that time, was to change her destiny. Franck’s cousin lent her a Leica camera for the trip, and among the landscapes and people of India and Tibet, Franck discovered her love of, and gift for, photography.

“My memory is of beauty everywhere: faces, landscapes, gestures, everyday objects that I enjoyed photographing so much,” she later recalled.

On her return, Franck determined to find professional training, becoming an intern at Time Life Magazine assisting foreign photo journalists on secondment. She developed a unique approach to photography based on meticulous composition and framing. She created timeless images that were the very antithesis of the sensationalism adopted by many fellow photographers in response to competition from TV.

Franck’s talent saw her swiftly progress to gain freelance work for Vogue, Life and Sports Illustrated. A major breakthrough came when she was hired to photograph the catalogue-raisonné of the sculptor Henri Étienne-Martin. Given her background, artists were endlessly fascinating to Franck and her appreciation of their craft is evident in the images she created.

She showed a particular gift for portraiture, managing to catch what her future husband, Henri Cartier-Bresson referred to as “the inner-silence of a person.” The moment “when the person is not smiling anymore or wondering if he or she is in their best position,” explains Agnès Sire, artistic director of the Fondation Henri-Cartier-Bresson, which is holding a major retrospective of Franck’s work.

Sire considers Franck’s portrait of the writer Albert Cohen to be one of the best early examples of this. “You see that in the picture he is suddenly looking at her deeply,” she says.

At the same time, she helped co-found the avant-garde group Théâtre du Soleil with Mnouchkine and others, becoming their official photographer, a role she would maintain for the rest of her life. In the politically charged climate of the 1960s, the group were heavily involved with the fight for equality. Coming from a sheltered background and being naturally shy, it was not an environment or stance she had been familiar with. “She had to fight to become like that – to transgress,” says Sire.

But transgress she did, photographing the student riots on the Boulevard Saint-Germain during the May 1968 protests, as well as Théâtre du Soleil’s performances in factories occupied by the protestors.

Franck was naturally drawn to their cause, being part of a profession that was predominantly the preserve of men, and at a time when women across the globe were fighting for equality. She took a great interest in the Mouvement de Libération des Femmes, documenting their protests. In 1970 she created work for the first edition of their magazine, Torchon Brûle, which literally translates as ‘Burning Dishcloth’, but can also mean tempers are flaring.

That same year, she married Cartier-Bresson, 30 years her senior, whom she had met through contacts at Time Life.

Sire, who knew them both, says this was another of her quiet “transgressions,” and recalls Franck’s brother telling her at Cartier-Bresson’s funeral that the family were very much against the match. “She apparently said to her family, ‘I prefer to spend 30 years with a genius than 60 years with a stupid guy,’’’ says Sire.

It was to Franck’s advantage that Cartier-Bresson had at that point abandoned photography, so there was no competition between the two. Instead they discussed art, literature and politics, which in turn fed in to her work. “Henri encouraged me, he gave me space,” she later said.

Throughout the 1970s Martine continued to document women’s fight for equality, photographing demonstrations in favour of divorce reform and the Veil Law, which led to the decriminalisation of abortion in France. She also travelled to feminist demonstrations in New York, Cyprus and Beijing.

A project to document the St-Pierre-de-Chaillot district of Paris saw her struck by the tedious nature of women’s work. Here, she photographed housewives, bank clerks, models and strippers, as well as images of women on posters and magazine covers to highlight the manner in which women were constantly objectified in public spaces.

She co-founded the socially engaged Viva Agency, embarking on a collective project to document the family in France, but left in the late 1970s to focus on a personal project that remained close to her heart for the rest of her life – the portrayal of old age.

Sire is not sure what it was that drew her to the subject. “It’s a big question I’m still asking myself,” she says. “Is it because she had an old husband? Is it because she found a real empathy with these people?”

Franck gave a dignity and respect to a group often marginalised in society. She didn’t shy away from showing loneliness and degradation, but there was no pathos or gloom. Often, she focused on the vivacity of a person’s eyes or the vitality of expression, highlighting the strength of personality that still existed behind the lined face.

In 1980 she was awarded associate membership of Magnum, going on to receive full membership in 1983, making her one of a very exclusive band of female photographers to be granted that honour.

Appropriately enough, that same year she photographed a number of other creative women – including Mnouchkine and film director Agnès Varda – for an exhibition entitled Des Femmes et la Création.

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Cartier-Bresson was delighted by her success. Although for many she would always be ‘the wife of Cartier-Bresson,’ for him she was the only photographer who mattered. At a dinner to celebrate an exhibition of Franck’s photographs of women in supposedly male professions, a female train driver asked him what he did. “I am the husband of the artist,” he replied.

Towards the end of the decade both she and Cartier-Bresson became increasingly interested in Buddhism. Franck was particularly intrigued by the education of tulku, the young boys said to be the reincarnation of previous Buddhist masters. On visits to Tibet she photographed the children and their tutors, capturing the childlike innocence they still possessed while undergoing training for their future roles.

She also photographed Tibetan children sent to India by their families to ensure their safety and education, which led her to consider the plight of refugees. During one of her last interviews in 2007 Franck said she planned to focus on immigration as a lasting consequence of military conflict.

Kindness, empathy and a respect for those marginalised by society were always integral to Franck’s photography. In an era where those qualities often seem to be in short supply, her work seems more vital than ever.