The Catherine Leroy Fund (Dotation Catherine Leroy or DCL) preserves and promotes Catherine Leroy’s legacy to make it available to scholars, historians, researchers, students, and to the general public, and to ensure its unique place in the history of photography. Since the Fund’s creation in 2011, over forty filmed interviews have been conducted in France and abroad with the men and women who knew or worked with Catherine Leroy in order to better understand the ways in which she operated in the field and to shed light on her character and motivations.
A not-for-profit organization founded in 2011, the Catherine Leroy Fund received its initial funding from Mrs. Denise Leroy (1914-2012), the mother of the photographer who had died in 2006. Her daughter’s sole heir, Denise Leroy donated Catherine’s works and transferred all artistic and intellectual property to the Fund. The Fund is the exclusive representative of Catherine Leroy’s work and legacy.
The Paris-based attorney-at-law, Isabelle Lescure, serves as the Fund’s counsel.
DCL’s Board Members
The Board of Trustees of the Fund is a working board made up of five volunteer members, all from the photography world, and who for the most part, have personally met or known Catherine Leroy in a variety of professional circumstances in the course of her career:
Matthias Bruggmann, Swiss national. Free-lance photographer, graduate of Vevey School (Switzerland) specialized in conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. Based in Lausanne. DCL co-Founder and Secretary.
Dominique Deschavanne, French citizen. Picture editor (Libération, L’Express), freelance journalist, photography writer. Head of the Paris office of the Contact Press Images photo agency. DCL co-Founder and Treasurer.
Robert Pledge, dual French and British nationalities. Journalist at Jeune Afrique, Zoom, le magazine de l’image and the agency Gamma. Co-founder and editorial director of Contact Press Images. Commutes between Paris and New York. DCL co-Founder and first Chairman of the Board (2014-2019), currently Vice-president .
Fred Ritchin, American. Dean Emeritus of the International Center for Photography School (ICP). Founder and director of Pixel Press and former professor of photography and imaging at New York University. Based in New York. DCL co-Founder and current Chairman of the Board (since 2020).
Pauline Vermare, dual French and American citizenships. Cultural Director at Magnum Photos in New York. Former curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP). Member of the board of the Saul Leiter Foundation. Based in New York. Joined the DCL board in 2020.
The Board wishes to express its deepest gratitude to Bernard Estrade, the Agence France Presse (AFP) foreign correspondent and chief-editor, who was Catherine Leroy’s companion in the 70s and early 80s, for his many contributions and his invaluable wisdom. He died in Paris in March 2011.
An advisory committee made up of a dozen experts from different nationalities and professions, all related to photography, includes: Lynsey Addario, Jane Evelyn Atwood, David Burnett, Patrick Chauvel, Raymond Depardon, Arnold Drapkin, Ayperi Ecer, Carol Guzy, Emmanuel Joffet, Jean-François Leroy, Ken Light, Helen Marcus, Don McCullin and Christine Spengler. The committee, chaired by Grazia Neri, the founder of the now defunct famous Italian photographic agency by the same name, advises and audits the Board.