Portraits d'écrivains

In this illustrious gallery of photographic archives, writers occupy a privileged place.

As a correspondent in Switzerland for numerous European and American newspapers and magazines, photographer and reporter Yves Debraine (Paris, 1925 - Lausanne, 2011) crossed paths with a myriad of figures from the worlds of sport, science, culture, and the arts throughout his career. The portraits he took of these personalities, sometimes the result of fleeting encounters, sometimes of long-standing relationships, filled the pages of the international press, notably L'Illustré, Paris Match, L'Express, Stern, Epoca, Life, Time, and National Geographic.
Writers occupy a special place in this illustrious gallery of photographic archives. They are captured in black and white, in posed portraits or candid shots, in their favorite landscapes or in their writing spaces. Captured at the heart of their literary work, poets, novelists, and philosophers reveal themselves in the book De Cocteau à Simenon: portraits d'écrivains (From Cocteau to Simenon: portraits of writers), edited by his son Luc Debraine and published by Editions Noir sur Blanc.
Echoing this tribute to the photographer, the Jan Michalski Foundation is exhibiting a selection of his images in the library, inviting visitors to encounter Ella Maillart, Jean Giono, Vladimir Nabokov, Georges Simenon, Patricia Highsmith, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Chessex, and Marcel Pagnol.