Fernand Fonssagrives

Fernand Fonssagrives (June 8, 1910 – April 23, 2003), born near Paris, France, was a photographer known for his 'beauty photography' in the early 1940s, and as the first husband of the model Lisa Fonssagrives. He died in 2003 at Little Rock, Arkansas.

Fonssagrives was a fashion photographer in the 1940s and 1950s when he took pictures for Town and Country and Harper's Bazaar magazines. At one point he was the highest paid photographer in New York. His later pictures featured female nudes with patterns of light on their skin. His photographic works are represented in Europe by Michael Hoppen Photography (London) and in the United States by Bonni Benrubi (New York) and Duncan Miller Gallery (Santa Monica). An image he created of his first wife Lisa is on the cover of the Spring Christie's photographic auction catalog (2008).

He was also an award winning sculptor working in Bronze, a painter and a writer.

Fonssagrives was married in 1935 to his first wife Lisa, whom he met at a dance school in Paris, and both became dancers. He said that he gave up dancing after he was injured in a diving accident. As a gift for recuperation Lisa gave Fernand a Rolleiflex camera. It was this that introduced him to photography, he becoming a noted photographer and her a noted model. They divorced in 1950.

Fonssagrives's second marriage—to Diane Capron, a professional figure skater and teacher—also ended in divorce. The native Frenchman lived the last 30 years of his life in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Fonssagrives was survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Mia Fonssagrives-Solow, a sculptor and jewelry designer who is married to real estate developer Sheldon Solow, and a son from his second marriage, Marc Fonssagrives.

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