Michelle Vignes
French-born American photographer (c. 1926–2012)
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Michelle Vignes (c. 1926 – October 4, 2012) was a French-born American photographer and photojournalist. She is known for her documentary photography of social movements in San Francisco starting in the mid-1960s.[1][2]
Michelle Vignes | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michelle Marie Vignes c. 1926 – c. 1928 |
| Died | October 4, 2012 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupations | Photographer, photojournalist, photo editor |
| Years active | 1953–2008 |
Early life
Michelle Vignes was born in Reims in Grand Est, France; the exact date of her birth has discrepancies, and range between 1926 and 1928.[3][4] During the Nazi occupation she left her home.[5] She did not attend school for photography.[1]
From 1953 until 1957 she worked at Magnum Photos, under photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa in Paris.[1][3][5]
Career
In 1965, Vignes moved to San Francisco, California.[1] Her photos appeared in Time, Life, Vogue, Newsweek, and Ramparts.[1] She had co-founded the International Fund for Photography and Fotovision.[5]
Vignes photo documented the San Francisco's counterculture of the 1960s, draft-card burning protests, the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, the occupation of Alcatraz (1969–1971), the Wounded Knee Occupation (1973), and Oakland's Blues musicians (1980s–1990s).[1][6]
Examples of Vignes photography can be found in museum collections, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;[7] the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.;[8] the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.;[9] the Centre Pompidou in Paris;[10] and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[4] Her archives are located at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.[1][11]