Bonney, Therese (Photographers)

(1894-1978)

War photographer. The first correspondent to capture the coming of the Russo-Finnish War in 1939 and the only woman photographer on the Finnish and Western Fronts during the major part of the fighting, Bonney’s photos of the aftermath of World War II lead to the founding of UNICEF.

Bonney was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1894 but spent most of her youth in California. After graduating from the University of California, she earned a master’s degree in romance languages at Harvard. In the midst of studying for her Ph.D. at Columbia, she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne, where in 1921 she was the tenth American and fourth woman to earn a Ph.D.

She launched the European branch of the American Red Cross’s Correspondence Exchange between European and American children, hoping to foster cultural relationship between the two continents. While lecturing and touring Europe, she wrote for newspapers and magazines in the United States, France, and England. Finding it impossible to locate appropriate images to accompany her articles, she established the Bonney Service, the first U.S. illustrated press service in Europe, which supplied images for newspapers and periodicals in thirty-three countries.

Before World War II, Bonney organized several photography exhibits in Europe and the United States and coauthored guide and cooking books with her sister, Louise Bonney Leicester. On the pretext of shooting photos of the Finland’s preparations for the Olympics Games, Bonney scooped the Russo-Finnish War and was decorated with the highest honor of Finland, the White Rose. Sometime after 1940, she was involved in a secret mission in Finland for the Office of Strategic Services. Leaving Finland in 1940, she returned to France, where she worked with the American Red Cross and Anne Morgan’s section of the American Friends of France and helped evacuate refugees. At the time of the German invasion, she was the only foreign correspondent at the Battle of the Meuse and made the most complete record of the Battle of France.


Returning to the United States, she exhibited her war photos at the Library of Congress. The Carnegie Corporation granted her money to return to Europe to comment on the war’s aftermath. In 1943, Bonney published a shocking book, Europe’s Children, which documented the ravages of the war on children. With her lens, Bonney’s images horrified Americans and Europeans alike in a manner that words could not. Making her home in Paris after the war, she wrote a column for the French daily Le Figaro and translated French plays that were produced on Broadway. For her bravery and humanitarian efforts, the French government awarded her the Croix de Guerre in 1941.

Next post:

Previous post: