Marie-Laure De Decker
Marie-Laure de Decker, the French model who went behind the camera to become an internationally famous war photographer, died on Saturday at the age of 75, her family announced.
Her family claimed she died on Saturday in a hospital after a protracted illness.
On Saturday, Chad’s Moussa Faki Mahamat, the current chair of the African Union Commission, paid tribute to her, expressing “great sadness” at the news of her death.
Marie-Laure De Decker began her career as a model in Algeria, when it was still a French colony, before opting to branch out into photography.
In the late 1960s, she captured iconic images of artists Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, as well as writer Philippe Soupault.
Marie-Laure De Decker covered the Vietnam War early in her career and was successful despite her inexperience.
“I said to myself: people are going to see that I’m not a real photographer”, she wrote in a memoir published in 1985. She remembered only having an old Leica camera with her.
“In fact, I later realized that this old Leica was a marvel”, she continued.
She encountered unique hurdles as a female war photographer.
“If you’re a woman, you’re never taken seriously”, she noted.
She went on to say, “There is an advantage to being a woman, as was the case in South Africa — they don’t kill you right away, they give you a chance”.
De Decker spent the majority of her career at the Gamma photo agency, which dissolved in 2009.
Their relationship ended on a sour note. When she asked for her images back, she only received black-and-white copies, not color ones.
She then lost a court battle to reclaim them and have her copyright respected for the digital versions of the images.
De Decker is particularly well-known for her photographs of celebrities such as actors Catherine Deneuve and Charlotte Rampling, musician Serge Gainsbourg, Caroline of Monaco, and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing.
According to her, the proceeds from the images helped fund her operations in combat zones.
“No one is interested in photographs of the destitute. You have to photograph the wealthy in order to sell them”, she added.
Her work in crisis zones was honored with the Albert Kahn International Planet Prize in 2013.
She has two kids with lawyer Thierry Levy.
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