DPARA <PAR@ ` TTEXT ` FBonney, ThÄrÅse1894?╨1978photographer and writerBorn about 1894 in Syracuse, New York, Mabel ThÄrÅse Bonney grew up there and from about 1902 in California. She graduated from the University of California, took a master╒s degree in Romance languages at Harvard, and after a short time at Columbia completed her doctorate of letters at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1919 she founded the European branch of the American Red Cross Correspondence Exchange. Later she established the Bonney Service, an illustrated press service supplying feature stories to the press of 33 countries. In 1929 she and an older sister collaborated on a series of guidebooks to the antiques, shops, and restaurants of Paris and on a French cookbook. During this period she accumulated a magnificent collection of early photographs, and in 1932 an exhibit of a number of them was mounted in Paris, later traveling to several cities in the United States under the title ╥The Gay Nineties.╙ Many of the items in the show were published in Remember When?, 1933. In 1934 she exhibited a collection of daguerreotypes under the title ╥The Second Empire.╙ In that year she was awarded the Legion of Honor for her work on the centenary observation of the death of the Marquis de Lafayette. In 1935 she moved to New York to become director of the new Maison Franìaise, a gallery in Rockefeller Center dedicated to fostering better U.S.-French cultural understanding. Within a few years, however, she turned to active photography and published The Vatican, containing many never before photographed scenes, in 1939 after several of the photos had appeared in Life magazine. In 1939 she traveled to Finland to photograph the preparations for the 1940 Olympic Games and instead found herself the only photojournalist at the scene of the Russian invasion in November. In 1940 she was in France, first helping in refugee relief at the Belgian frontier and later in Paris. She was given carte blanche by General Maxime Weygand, commander of French home forces, and was the only foreign journalist present at the battle of the Meuse in June. She then returned to the United States and prepared an exhibition of photographs that was displayed at the Library of Congress under the title ╥To Whom the Wars are Done╙ and around the country as ╥War Comes to the People.╙ In 1941 ThÄrÅse Bonney traveled again to Europe, visited and photographed in Spain, Portugal, unoccupied France, England, Finland (where she acted as an agent of the Office of Strategic Services), and elsewhere, and created the collection that was shown in 40 cities and published in 1943 as Europe╒s Children, a moving, even shocking portrayal of the effects of war that was highly praised by critics. In November 1941 she was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government. In 1944 her ╥War Comes to the People╙ collection was published in book form. After the war she resumed residence in France, where she continued to pursue photography, wrote a column for Le Figaro, and translated a number of French plays for Broadway production. In her eighties she returned to the Sorbonne to study for a second doctorate in gerontology. In the fall of 1976 the Museum of the City of Paris mounted a retrospective exhibition of her work entitled ╥An American╤Witness of Her Time.╙ Not least among her accomplishments was to have been painted six times by Georges Rouault and three times by Raoul Dufy and to have photographed many of the great French artists of the 20th century. She was the recipient of a great many awards and decorations from several nations. She died in Paris on January 15, 1978. ╞styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 4 !I I 5¬ J !I √ !I !I ∩ !I · !I b !I f !I s 5¬ t !I ' 5¬ ( !I
