Janine Niepce was born on February 12, 1921 in Meudon in a wine-growing family in Burgundy. In 1944, she passed an Art History and Archeology degree at the Sorbonne university. Meanwhile, she developed films for the Resistance forces and took part in the Liberation of Paris as a liaison officer. From 1946 onwards, she was one of the first French women to work as a reporter photographer and traveled all around France for the Tourism and Foreign Affairs Commission, showing the evolutions and permanences of a society under mutation. In 1955, she joined the Rapho agency and made her first reports about directed labor and family planning, tackling what would then become the main theme of her work: the feminine condition. From 1963, she traveled throughout Europe and worldwide (Japan, India, Cambodia, United States, Canada) and covered the events of May 1968 dressed up as a foreign tourist. Between 1970 and 1980, she followed the women’s struggles for the liberty of contraception, termination of pregnancy and equal pay. Thus, she made numerous portraits of women, famous or anonymous, in Paris and in the provinces. From 1984 to 1986, she made reports about advanced technology jobs for the Ministry of Research. She died in Paris in 2007. Janine Niepce published a dozen of books and her works are exhibited and housed in numerous French and international museums. Roger-Viollet has been the exclusive distributor of her photographs since June 2010.
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