Willy Ronis, 99, took iconic pictures of Parisian life

Mr. Ronis died at a Paris hospital where he had been admitted days earlier, said Stephane Ledoux, the president of the Eyedea photo agency.

Lovers, nudes, and scenes from Paris streets were the mainstay of Mr. Ronis’s photographs, which reflect the humanist school of photography in a career that began in the 1930s and reaped honors for him in France and abroad.

In a wheelchair and on dialysis for some time, Mr. Ronis nevertheless managed to address the crowd at the annual Arles photographic exhibition in July, where he was honored.

Mr. Ronis, along friend Robert Doisneau and Henri Cartier-Bresson, was among France’s great photographers who emerged after World War II. The three along with two other photographers were honored as early as 1953 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Mr. Ronis’s genius spilled forth in his spontaneous photos of the streets of working-class Paris, from its bistros to its lovers and gardens and even its strikes, always captured with a benevolent eye.

“I never took a mean photo,’’ Mr. Ronis said in 2005. “I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed.’’

Born in Paris, Mr. Ronis studied violin but gave up a music career to take over the family photo studio when his father, Emmanuel Ronis, fell ill. For four years, he photographed weddings, babies, and communions.

A month after his father died in 1936, Mr. Ronis did his first reportage, a Bastille Day parade. He worked steadily until World War II, when he joined the army. When the Nazis invaded France, Mr. Ronis, born to Jewish parents who had fled the pogroms, moved to unoccupied France.

The golden age of photography followed, and Mr. Ronis emerged as one of its leaders.

President Nicolas Sarkozy praised Mr. Ronis as the “chronicler of postwar social aspirations and the poet of a simple and joyous life.’’

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said Mr. Ronis immortalized “for each of us the poetry of our daily lives and saved it from lost time.’’

Mr. Ronis worked for numerous publications, including Life magazine, and collected dozens of honors throughout his career, in France, the United States, and elsewhere.

After nearly 75 years of taking pictures, Mr. Ronis, encumbered by canes and no longer able to snap photos, set aside his camera.

“If I can’t run, climb up onto a bench . . . rush toward something I see far away that might interest me, it’s over,’’ Mr. Ronis said.

Age, however, did not defeat Mr. Ronis. At 85, he went sky- diving, snapping a photo of himself on the way down.