Robert Delpire (1926-2017)

Photography owes much to the work of Robert Delpire, who died on 26 September, aged 91, but probably few of us realise the huge contribution he made in other areas of his publishing. Back in 2012 in New York, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in collaboration with Aperture Gallery, The Gallery at Hermès, and La Maison Française of New York University presented Delpire & Co., an exhibition featuring a half century of achievement in the life and career of Robert Delpire, and the short video on their web site has his wife Sarah Moon talking about his career.

Probably most photographers know him best as first publisher in 1958 of Robert Frank’s legendary ‘The Americans‘, which was only later published in the USA and much later became a book that every serious photographer had to own. But possibly an ever greater legacy to photography was the whole series of those small black covered ‘Photo Poche‘, carefully selected and well-printed collections of photography at a price that students and struggling photographers could afford – and most of us will have a few on our shelves.

But so much has been written about him that it would be superfluous to add more, but here are some of the more interesting links I’ve come across so far that go beyond the Wikipedia article – but there are and will be many more:

The great publisher Robert Delpire passed away: The Eye of Photography
Obituary: Robert Delpire, Publisher of Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Cartier-Bresson: Photo District News
Remembering the legendary Robert Delpire: British Journal of Photography
In Memoriam: Robert Delpire (1926-2017): Magnum
Remembering Robert Delpire, Publisher of the Greats: Aperture

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.