Jean-Pierre Ronzel

Jean-Pierre Ronzel (Bois-Colombes, 1930) At 14, Jean-Pierre Ronzel enrolled in the technical high school of applied arts rue Dupetit-Thouars in Paris then continued his training at the Professional School of Industrial Design which has a section “Advertisement” in which Max Ponty, the famous designer of the eponymous cigarette packet gypsy, teaches. Perfecting his training, he worked a few months for the Office de Documentation par le Film then for the ABC advertising agency, and finally decided to stand on his own feet, we are in 1948, Jean-Pierre Ronzel is 18 years old. He knocks on the door of the Figaro and his first project is accepted, a photograph of the perfume “Ever After” for Paquin, of which he remembers, moved, the conditions of production: “With my father's camera, I photograph the bottle in my parents' apartment, the bottle being illuminated by an ordinary bulb, the light directed through a magnifying glass towards the bottle. "(Unpublished text) In 1951, he created his first company, the" Graphic Photo "studio, dissolved in 1952 but having had among others as clients: Colgate-Palmolive, Vespa and Pathé-Cinéma! In 1954, he worked at Boussac and the volume of orders became so important that he proposed to the company to create its own photo studio by integrating a laboratory, the offer was accepted and Jean-Pierre Ronzel produced for Jalla, for example. (terry cloth from Boussac) one of the very first photographs of a naked female silhouette, the young woman who appears behind the cathedral glass evoking a shower screen is Christine Gabillot, star model of Diadermine. He left Boussac in 1956, went to Germany where the photographic equipment was the most advanced and returned with a Linhof 20 x 25 cm camera. In 1957 he renovated a former printing ink workshop in Levallois-Perret where he worked until 1995 and conquered the world of advertising photography! Very few photographers can boast of the track record of Jean-Pierre Ronzel who works with all the major agencies and the biggest advertisers: Badoit, Ariel, Phillips for Elvinger; Ovomaltine, IBM, Saint-Gobain and Tupperware for RLDupuy; Camay and Bonux for Dorland; Bic pens for the French Propaganda Agency, etc. Finally Volkswagen (1960-1962), Porsche Sonauto (from 1963) then Yamaha will entrust the image of their brand to it for 30 years and Jean-Pierre Ronzel will deeply renew the imagery of automobile advertising, too often frozen in the archetype of the rolling machine, swallowing kilometers, or parked in front of a pretty property with characters with conventional attitudes ... Look closely at the images of Jean-Pierre Ronzel, all express, at the end of an immense professionalism technique, a simple and real joie de vivre that make him a sort of Prévert or Jacques Tati of advertising photography.