Ingeborg de Beausacq

The extraordinary life of a photographer

Photo exhibition in Goult, Provence, France
August 11-15, 2007

Ingeborg de Beausacq, a member of the Society of Woman Geographers (SWG), died in 2003. In 1986 she donated her property La Gaille in Provence to the Fondation Arts et Métiers but continued to live there while traveling worldwide.

Ingeborg and Mechtild Rössler had met through the SWG where both were members and became friends. They traveled together to the Triennial in Washington DC in 1993 and subsequently Mechtild spent time at La Gaille and came to see Ingeborg in New York in 1998. In 2002 they met for the last time in the retirement home in St Didier where Ingeborg spent the last part of her life. When she died, Mechtild was asked to write the obituary for the Bulletin of the Society of Women Geographers, which was published in the Bulletin 2003. She tried to trace Ingeborg’s archives and wrote to the Fondation Arts et Métiers and to the retirement home, without success.

In 2006 Lena and Jean Pierre Augris (a member of the foundation) discovered the archives of Ingeborg at the Fondation Arts et Métiers. They wrote an article about her in the journal Arts & Métiers Magazine on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the donation. They had met Ingeborg when they stayed at La Gaille in 2001 and were impressed by the story of her life that she told them. They also found the letter Mechtild had written on top of one of the boxes and contacted her.

The three met in Paris and the idea to document Ingeborg’s photographic heritage and make a small exhibition was born. As Mechtild was able to make an exhibition space available in her house in the Luberon, not far away from La Gaille, it was decided to make an exhibition there and to show the public the extraordinary life of Ingeborg de Beausacq.

The exhibition took place August 11-15, 2007 at Goult, a small medieval Provence village, during the village summer festival “A Summer at Goult” (“L'été à Goult”). Featuring a selection of approximately 20 black-and-white photographs of and by Ingeborg de Beausacq the exhibition traced the development of her career as a photographer over the main periods in her life: from high society portraitist in Brazil to fashion photographer in New York, journalist reporter in the Cayenne penitentiary, primitive art collector while living with Boni tribes in French Guyana and later with natives in New Guinea, and finally restorer of an old farm in France. Two press-books were also displayed with articles published in the 1950s and 60s about her and her photo reporting. The exhibition thus documented the artist's long life – she was 93 years old when she died - and work. The event was a great success and most of the time the exhibition room was crowded with people who were fascinated by the story of Ingeborg's fantastic life.

The organizers would like this photographic and documentary heritage to be further preserved. Ingeborg de Beausacq's property la Gaille was sold by the Foundation in late 2007 and the new owners, who will continue to rent holiday apartments as Ingeborg and the Foundation did before, are quite agreeable to set up an exhibition at La Gaille or nearby Saumane in the future.

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