Tribute to Sabine Weiss

We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of photographer Sabine Weiss (1924-2021).

"The first time I met Sabine Weiss" says Tatyana Franck, director of Photo Elysée, " I was immediately touched by her enthusiasm, her curiosity that was expressed through her talented eyes and her mischievousness, by her humanism and her natural goodness. Sabine has always kept her childlike heart and her unconditional love for LIFE. We invited her in 2015 to pay tribute to her during the Nuit des images on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Musée de l'Elysée. She came with her daughter Marion, her granddaughter and her faithful assistant, Laure Augustins. A friendship was immediately born. Sabine Weiss trusted us enormously to leave her entire archive to Photo Elysée. It is an act of generosity and recognition that confirms the vocation of our institution to preserve the Swiss photographic and artistic memory and the importance given to the creative process of photographers. Sabine was like a fairy godmother for our institution. She was close to all of our teams, she accompanied the transformation of our institution, followed the architectural competition, was present in Lausanne for the laying of the foundation stone in 2018, and at our side last November for the handover ceremony of our new building."

The Sabine Weiss archive includes all of her negatives (200,000), all of her contact sheets (7,000), most of her vintage prints (2,700), most of her late modern prints (2,000), and her working prints (3,500), about 2'000 diapositives, and the whole documentation, that is to say the press archives, the reviews, the justifications, the correspondence, the films, the recordings.

An exhibition in tribute to the photographer will be presented at Photo Elysée in 2024.

The entire team at Photo Elysée would like to pay tribute to this great lady of photography and sends its deepest sympathy to her daughter Marion, her grandchildren and her faithful assistant, Laure.