Ina Bandy

2013: La vie a fleur d’objectif, a solo exhibition of Ina Bandy's works, the Gallery of the Alliance Française de Bruxelles-Europe, Brussels.

2006-2007: La photographie humaniste: 1945-1968 (curated by Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Francoise Denoyelle). Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

A collection of Bandy's photographs are held at the BnF and the French National Archives. She was commissioned by Régine Pernoud, conservator at the Museum of History in France between 1949-1974.

She produced photographic commissions for various newspapers and magazines such as ELLE, Médecine de France and Art News. While photographing a group of children living at a Paris Metro station for the Combat newspaper, Bandy met Robert Ardouvin, founder of ‘Les Amis des Enfants de Paris’. From 1948 the association housed underprivileged children in a village in Vercheny and Bandy helped to photograph these children, remaining attached to the ‘Village D’Enfants’ until her death in 1973.

In 1948, Ina Bandy also became a member of Le Groupe des XV, putting her in the company of other humanist photographers such as Willy Ronis and Sabine Weiss.

Bandy has contributed photographs for various works written by André Malraux, including his three volumes on The Psychology of Art (published 1947-1949). Her photographs taken in Sri Lanka between 1955-1956 are used as sources for the illustrations in E. F. C. Ludowyk's book The Footprint of the Buddha.

In the early 1920s, Bandy remained in Moscow while her mother accompanied her youngest brother Benjamin to Germany. At this time, Bandy met Nicolas Neumann (alias Nicolas Bandy), a Hungarian photographer who mentored her in photography. They married in 1925 but were to divorce later – even so, Ina Bandy would keep her pseudonym, moving to Germany before settling in France during the early 1930s. In Paris, she became a member of Alliance Photo, a photographic agency founded by René Zuber and directed by Maria Eisner, but she would cross into the zone libre at the outbreak of World War II.

Bandy was born Ida Gurevitsch to a relatively non-religious Jewish family in Tallinn, Estonia, then a part of the Russian Empire. Her family escaped to Moscow at the outbreak of war in 1914, but the Revolution of 1917 nevertheless claimed the life of one of her brothers.

Ina Bandy (born Ida Gurevitsch, 14 October 1903 – 1973) was a humanist photographer. Specialising in photographs of children, her work is held in the French National Archives and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.