Roger Parry

Roger Parry was a French photographer and illustrator, born on November 13, 1905, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, and died on May 4, 1977, in Cognac.

Biography

Roger Parry began his studies at the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris in 1922, where he met the illustrator Fabien Loris and Édouard Caen, who would later become a representative at the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) and help him find work in publishing.

From 1928 onward, Parry collaborated with photographer Maurice Tabard.

In 1932, together with Fabien Loris, he traveled to New York and then to Tahiti, Moorea, and the Leeward Islands in Polynesia. They stayed there for several months, producing landscape photographs, scenes of everyday life, a film, and drawings. Parry’s photographs were published by Gallimard in 1934 under the title Tahiti, 106 photographs by R. Parry.

In August 1944, Parry joined the Liberation Committee of Press Photo Reporters and documented the liberation of France until the spring of 1945. He later covered, for Agence France-Presse (AFP), General Charles de Gaulle’s official visit to New York in 1945 and the Moscow Conference in March–April 1947.

After the war, Parry worked primarily in the publishing sector. He experimented with photographic processes combining direct photography and darkroom effects, and produced visuals for advertising commissions and the press. This work led to the illustrations published in Banalité by Léon-Paul Fargue. He also joined the team working with André Malraux on the creation of the Univers des formes collection at Gallimard, whose first volume was published in 1960.

Roger Parry illustrated more than 200 crime novels for the NRF, as well as many other works, including Man’s Fate (La Condition humaine) by André Malraux.

He died on May 4, 1977, in Cognac.