Mabel Therese Bonney

 Mabel Therese Bonney

Born sometime in 1894 in Syracuse New York, Therese grew up there and in California. She graduated from the University of California. She earned a master’s degree in Romance languages from Harvard. She studied at Columbia for a while but earned her doctorate  of letters at the Sorbonne in Paris. 

In 1919 she settled in Paris with a goal of pursuing photography and promoting cultural exchanges between France and the United States.  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. 

Her photographic career included highly acclaimed works on antiques, guidebooks, and a large accumulation of photographs that were widely exhibited at various gallery shows throughout the world. In 1934 she was awarded the Legion of Honor for her work on the centenary observation of the death of the Marquis de Lafayette. Bonney was also a sought after model.  She was "acclaimed as the most perfect da Vinci model in the world."  (Syracuse Herald)  She modeled for artists in France and Spain. 1935 she moved to New York and became the director of the new Maison Francaise, a gallery in Rockefeller Center. Her photos were featured in Life magazine.  In 1939 she traveled to Finland to photograph the preparations for the 1940 Olympic games but found herself the only photojournalist at the scene of the Russian invasion in November.

The outbreak of World War II appalled Bonney. War’s mindless uprooting of innocent civilians provided the principal subject for this photographer/photojournalist. She was also involved in many relief efforts. Bonney’s images of homeless children and adults on the backroads of Europe touched millions of viewers in the United States and abroad. Of her "truth raids" into the countryside to document the horror of war, Bonney said: "I go forth alone, try to get the truth and then bring it back and try to make others face it and do something about it.”

She traveled extensively and in her 80’s returned to the Sorbonne to study for a second doctorate in gerontology. She was the recipient of innumerable awards and had her portrait painted by many including six times by Georges Rouault and three times by Raoul Dufy.