Fonds Legros – Mail Rodrigues

Jean LEGROS, born in 1920 in Réunion island, was a pionner in photography during the forties and sixties.
Born into a merchant family involved in trading, he held an important rôle within the family business, continuing to be passionate about photography.
Using first a simple « box camera » (the Eastman Kodak Bownie) and a Leica M3 from his 18th birthday, he then used a Foca universal that he would keep along his whole life. He would share his passion for
photography with André BLAY, André ALBANY and Jean COLBE, also passionnated about this art.
He would captured landscapes and daily life with his wife, Suzy, from Saint-Gilles-les bains to La Plaine des Cafres when walking around the island enjoying nature, plants and minerals, as they were very
interrested about.
After his death in 2004, Patrick LEGROS inherits Jean LEGROS’s photographic funds and creates the Jean LEGROS association that publishes « Au coeur de La Réunion », photographs from 1940 to 1970 by Jean
LEGROS, available in all public libraries in Saint-Paul.
Preserved in the Departemental Archives of Reunion island, the collection counts 3000 black and white and colored photographies which can be seen online on the Historical iconographic library of the indian
ocean. (ihoi.org)
These pictures of l’Hermitage and Trou d’Eau, taken in the fifties and the sixties, illustrated the old days in Reunion island, « tan Lontan », before urbanization and tourism.

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