Robert Delpire


Robert Delpire was an art publisher, editor, curator, film producer and graphic designer who lived and worked in Paris. He predominantly concerned himself with documentary photography, influenced by his interest in anthropology.
Delpire was editor-in-chief of the cultural review Neuf. He published books of photography, illustration and graphic art through Éditions Delpire and Photo Poche. Photo Poche has been described as "the most successful series of photography monographs ever published", books that "have introduced successive generations to photography". Delpire was the first to publish many notable books of photography including Les Américains by Robert Frank, "perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century"; and Les Gitans by Josef Koudelka, "one of the defining photobooks of the 20th century".
He was director of Centre national de la photographie, and had his own gallery, Galerie Delpire. His company Delpire Productions has produced various films, including Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?. He was a key figure in 1960s advertising as a graphic designer with his advertising agency, Delpire Werbung.
Delpire was awarded the International Centre of Photography 's Infinity Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal. The Photo Poche collection won the Prix Nadar and ICP's Infinity Award, and Delpire along with Sarah Moon won The Cultural Award from the German Society for Photography. Many of the books he edited and published, and films he produced, have also received notable awards.
The retrospective exhibition, Delpire & Co., was shown at Rencontres d’Arles festival, Arles; Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris; then simultaneously across four locations in New York.

Life and work

Delpire was born in Paris, France, on 24 January 1926. As a medical student, Delpire became editor-in-chief of Neuf, the Maison de la Médecine’s cultural review for its doctors. Neuf devoted much of its content to photography by Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Izis, Willy Ronis and Robert Frank. There were nine irregular issues from 1950 to 1953.
Delpire published three photography books under the short-lived imprint Huit : Doisneau’s Les Parisiens tels qu’ils sont ; Cartier-Bresson’s Les Danses à Bali, the first of a long collaboration between Delpire and his friend Cartier-Bresson; and George Rodger’s Le Village des Noubas.
In the mid-1950s in Paris he founded and ran the publisher Delpire & Co., which has continued to produce books under the name Éditions Delpire by photographers such as Carier-Bresson, Lartigue, Brassaï, Doisneau, Frank and many others. Delpire & Co. published a series of books on culture called Encyclopédie Essentielle. In 1957 the fifth work in Encyclopédie Essentielle was the first publication of Robert Frank’s Les Américains. The Americans was "One of Delpire's pivotal contributions to photography": it "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century". Delpire's edition, unlike later English-language editions, included texts by Simone de Beauvoir, Erskine Caldwell, William Faulkner, Henry Miller and John Steinbeck that Delpire positioned opposite Frank’s photographs. The Encyclopédie Essentielle series also included Les Allemands by René Burri.
Delpire & Co. also published children's books with its Dix sur Dix series, employing illustrators such as André François and Alain Le Foll. Its first was the début publication in book form of Crocodile Tears by André François, having already published it in Neuf No. 9 in 1953. Delpire & Co. was the first French publisher of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.
In 1955 Delpire created the brand identity for L'ŒIL magazine and was its artistic director for eight years.
Delpire ran an advertising agency, Delpire Publicité / Delpire Werbung, with clients that included Citroën and L’Oréal. For a decade from around the mid 1950s, Delpire, in partnership with Claude Puech, produced sales brochures and posters for Citroën, using the work of photographers, illustrators, painters and typographers. Delpire Werbung also produced TV adverts for Citroën.
Delpire opened Galerie Delpire in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris, in 1963; this exhibited photographs and books published by Delpire & Co.
Through his film production company, Delpire Productions, Delpire produced various films, notably some by the photographer and filmmaker William Klein, including Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo?.
Delpire set up a creative studio and publishing house called Idéodis.
In 1982 he was appointed by the French arts minister Jack Lang to be director of the Centre national de la photographie. Whilst director until 1996 he organised exhibitions and created a collection of small, numerically sequenced softcover pocket-sized books titled :fr:Photo Poche|Photo Poche, of which there are hundreds on photographers and photographic themes. Liz Jobey in the Financial Times'' described them as "the most successful series of photography monographs ever published", books that "have introduced successive generations to photography".
He was the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, and at the time of his death served on its advisory board.
Delpire was married to the photographer Sarah Moon.
He died on 26 September 2017 in Paris at the age of 91.

Publications

Notable publications first published by Delpire

Produced by Delpire

Exhibitions related to Delpire's work

Awards for Delpire