2023-07-16 18:41:23
Marie-Laure de Decker, in Paris, in 1965. JACK NISBERG / © JACK NISBERG / ROGER-VIOLLET
With her long figure, her short hair, her smoking voice and her strong character, Marie-Laure de Decker did not go unnoticed in the world of photoreporters. But she is above all distinguished by her way of tracing her path by instinct, without depending on an editorial or a fashion: a single party to the Vietnam War in 1970, the one who was one of the figures of the Gamma agency photographed hostage Françoise Claustre in Chad, lived in Chile and South Africa during apartheid, before becoming passionate about the Wodaabe, a nomadic Fulani tribe. She died on July 15 at the age of 75, in a hospital in Toulouse.
Born in Algeria in 1947, Marie-Laure de Decker remembered above all her very young years spent in a village in the Ivory Coast where her father worked in a gold mine. She discovers there, at the same time as “Enchanted Africa” who charms her forever, “the incredible stupidity of colonization, the theft that the Whites imposed on Africa” as she confides in Monde in 2021.
Returning to France, sent to boarding school, the slender young girl began by becoming a model – a job she hated – before opting for photography. With her first camera, offered by the designer Roland Topor, her companion at the time, she began by photographing the old artists she admired: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer… without her photos then arousing much interest. .
Also read the interview: Article reserved for our subscribers Marie-Laure de Decker: “Courage is what makes the difference between people”
As she dreams of working at the Gamma agency, created by Gilles Caron, she decides to go to Vietnam, at the age of 23, with her Leica. His more than rudimentary English does not prevent him from quickly signing photos for the magazine Newsweek. « You lose the war » (“you are losing the war”) repeats the young photographer to the generals she meets, after having seen the GIs scared to death and ravaged by heroin. Very quickly, more than the fights and the bombardments in the jungle, it is the Vietnamese that she likes to photograph: life in the villages, the bars, the children…
The ordeal of hostage Françoise Claustre
Returning to Paris after two years in Vietnam, she ended up joining the Gamma agency, not without difficulty. She is then the only woman in this masculine and macho environment – “a photographer, Henri Bureau, asked me if I was coming to clean up”, she says. At first confined to minor subjects, she managed to break through when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then Minister of Finance, chose her for his portraits. Despite their divergent political opinions, a privileged relationship ensues between them, which she will not hesitate to use to obtain a residence permit for her friend Eldridge Cleaver, sulphurous leader of the Black Panthers.
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