11 March - 23 October 2022
The Casa dei Tre Oci in Venice presents, from March 11 to October 23, 2022, the largest retrospective ever held – and the first in Italy - dedicated to the Franco-Swiss photographer Sabine Weiss, who passed away at the age of 97 at her home in Paris on 28 December 2021, one of the greatest representatives of French humanist photography along with Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Edouard Boubat, Brassaï, and Izis.
The exhibition is the first and most important tribute to her career, with over 200 photographs. Curated by Virginie Chardin, the retrospective is sponsored by the Fondazione di Venezia, realized by Marsilio Arte in collaboration with the Berggruen Institute, and produced by the Sabine Weiss studio in Paris and Laure Delloye-Augustins, with the support of the Jeu de Paume and the International Festival Les Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles. The only woman photographer of the postwar era to have practiced this profession for such a long time and in every photographic genre - from reportage, artists' portraits, and fashion to ‘street’ photography, with particular attention to children's faces and her extensive travels around the world, Sabine Weiss, who was able to actively participate in the construction of this exhibition, had opened her personal archives in Paris to tell her extraordinary story and present her work for the first time in a comprehensive and structured way. The shots exhibited at the Tre Oci retrace, along with various publications and magazines of the time, Weiss's entire career, from her beginnings in 1935 to the 1980s. From the outset, as the photographs of children and passersby in the exhibition testify, Weiss directed her lens on bodies and gestures, immortalizing emotions and feelings, in the spirit of French humanist photography, an approach from which she would never deviate, as can be seen from her words: "To be powerful, a photograph must speak to us about an aspect of the human condition, make us feel the emotion that the photographer felt in the presence of her subject".