Born Katherine Ann White in the United States in 1930, Cuchi White was introduced to photography at a very early age through her visits to museums, and was influenced by the photographers of the FSA, a generation that emerged from the great photographic commission launched by Roosevelt's New Deal to document the crisis of the 1930s. Fascinated by the major Edward Weston retrospective at MoMA in 1946, she enrolled at Bennington College, an avant-garde university reserved for women at the time, and at the age of 18 took part in the last Photo League exhibition held at MoMA in 1948-1949. In 1952 she decided to leave the United States for Europe, where she met up in Florence with the Italian artist Paolo Boni, who was to become her husband. In 1954 they settled permanently in Paris. Recognition came with her work on trompe-l'oeil, exhibited in Arles in 1980, followed by the publication of "L'Oeil ébloui", her first book published by Editions du Chêne in 1981 with a preface by Georges Perec. As the French historian of photography Françoise Denoyelle says: "His eye, forged by strolling through museums and countless palaces, villas and gardens, takes us back to the 'magic of the museum'. Cuchi White's images question pretense, play with grounds and types, and bear witness to the imprint of time through the traces of the past inscribed in the material of the present. Her deceptive mirrors, optical games and playful coincidences remind us of the impermanence of reality. Following her death in 2013, Cuchi White's archives were saved and assembled by her daughter Carla Boni, who has since been reconstructing the photographer's career path, giving the public access to this major legacy.
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