(1874-1950), photographer

Maurice-Louis Branger was born in Fontainebleau, France, in 1874 and began to work as a photographer around 1895. In 1905 he created his ‘Photopresse’ photo reportage agency at 5 Rue Cambon, a side road adjacent to the central Tuileries Gardens, in Paris. He was a versatile and almost hyper-active photographer, covering the main events of Paris life, most famously the flood of 1910, but also criminal affairs and trials, cultural and political life and numerous sporting events. He seemed to have developed a particular taste for pioneering motor sport events from 1902, and he followed this majestic subject internationally until 1914.

As a senior reporter, Branger was one of the few photographers to go to the Balkans in 1913 during the First Balkan War. He earned particular prominence for his work from the battlefields in the First World War, and later returned to covering trials and political life in Paris. He died in 1950 in Mantes-la-Jolie.