Dominique Darbois died at the age of 89. She is an important figure in the history of documentary photography that has left us, but also a humanist and a committed woman.
Interned in Drancy at 17, Dominique Stern joined the female forces of the French army from the Liberation, inventing a name: Darbois.
She received the Resistance Medal and the War Cross in 1944. A woman of conviction, she was also an active activist in the fight against colonization, especially in Algeria.
She trained in photography in the 1950s, working with Pierre Jahan, a close friend of Henri Cartier Bresson. Her shots combine an immense tenderness for their subject with this commitment that will never leave her, which carries her work as her life: the fight for freedom.
“Photography makes it possible to reduce intolerance by broadening the field of vision in the sense of a better understanding of others, by pushing back the shadow in favour of light,” she said.
His photographs of Afghanistan, unique testimonies of a world now disappeared, were entrusted to the Collège de France in 2007. The reissue by Xavier Barral in 2004 of photographs from the collection The Children of the World, published by Nathan Publishing in 1952, reminds us of the richness of his skilfully orchestrated photographs for the benefit of reality and truth, bearers of a hope of universal exchange between peoples.
Fleur Pellerin extends her deepest condolences to her family and loved ones.