Alexandra Boulat dies

Today I heard the sad news that Alexandra Boulat has died, aged 45. I wrote about her here in June after her hospitalization following a ruptured brain aneurysm while she was working in Israel. Doctors induced a coma to give her the best chance of recovery, but unfortunately she failed to recover, dying peacefully in Paris on October 5, as reported on the VII site.

You can see her portfolio and read a brief biography on the VII site, and there is also a tribute on ABC News.

Hers was a striking talent, and her death is a sad loss for photography as well as a great loss for all her friends and family. As it says on VII, “Her friendship, courage, spirit and creativity touched all of our lives and will remain dear memories always.”

Here is the main part of what I wrote about her earlier:

Alex was born in 1962 in Paris, and her parents were both connected to photography. Pierre Boulat (1924-98) was a Life staff photographer in the 1950s and 60s and Annie Boulat founded and still owns the Paris-based Cosmos agency (its photographers include Bruno Stevens.)

Pierre began working for Samedi Soir in Paris in 1945, and photographed both in Paris and overseas for the magazine. His pictures appeared in Life from 1953 to 1976, and he photographed many leading celebrities, including Aristotle Onassis, Federico Fellini and Duke Ellington. From 1973 on he became a freelance again.

Not suprisingly Alex started taking pictures when she was 12 and became a photographer in 1989 after training in graphic art and art history. She became well-known for her work covering the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and in particular for her fine work on Kosovo, which showed the efect of the violence on the every-day lives of the people there, and gained her the Golden Visa Award at the Perpignan Visa pour l’image, in 1998, and both an ICP Infinity Award and an Alfred Eisenstadt Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1999. Other awards came from the NPPA, World Press Photo, Overseas Press Club etc.

Alex worked for the SIPA agency founded by Göksin Sipahioglu in Paris for 10 years until 2000. In September 2001, together with Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey and John Stanmeyer she founded Agence VII. Her work appeared in leading magazines around the world, particularly in the National Geographic Magazine, Time and Paris Match.

You can see her photography on the VII site, and also at War Photo Ltd and the Hasted Hunt Gallery.

Unfortunately my two articles linked to in my previous piece on Bruno Stevens and Göksin Sipahioglu are currently not available on line – even on the Wayback Machine, although you can find many of my older features there.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.