Marie-Laure de Decker, the 75-year-old French war photographer, died today in Toulouse, according to her family
De Decker died at a city hospital after a long illness.
She was born in Bon (Anaba, Algeria) and began her modelling career.
However, she acquired a fascination for photography and worked with numerous artists in the late 1960s, including Man Ray, Marcel Deschamps, and Philippe Soupeau.
Her love of travel brought her to Vietnam, where she decided to shoot the war.
Despite her lack of expertise, she was successful.
“I was afraid that people would notice that I’m not a true photojournalist because I don’t have my camera, only an old Leica.
In fact, as I later realised, the old Leica was a masterpiece,” she wrote in her memoirs in 1985.
De Decker believed that it was difficult for a woman to become a war journalist because “they are never taken seriously,” she said.
She went on to say that in South Africa, “they don’t kill them right away, but they give them a chance.”
She was a member of the Gamma agency from 1971 until its demise in 2009.
When she inquired for the images taken, they only provided her the black and white ones, not the colour ones, which was disappointing for her.
She later lost her action to assert copyright in the digitised photos.
Marie-Laure de Decker is also recognised for her images of celebrities such as Caroline of Monaco and French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, which she took after seeing herself on television and learning that he had won the 1974 presidential election.
She has two sons, one of which is Thierry Levi, a lawyer.
