Photographer René Robert died on a busy street in Paris from hypothermia at the age of 84. An elderly man fell and lay for more than five hours on the sidewalk. When the homeless man approached him, it was already too late, Robert’s close friend, journalist and musician Michel Momponte, told RTL radio, Report informs, citing foreign media.
According to Momponte, Robert left the house at 21:30. He felt unwell and fell to the pavement, hitting his head.
“He remained alone, on the ground, for at least the first five or six hours in one of the busiest areas of Paris, and no one saw fit to come up,” he said.
Around 5:30 am the next day, the homeless man reported to law enforcement officers about a man lying on the ground. Momponte hopes that the tragic death of Robert will change something in the souls of people. The journalist himself hopes to find the homeless man who reported the photographer to thank him.
“If this painful death can serve anything, it is what it is. When a person is lying on the pavement, no matter how we hurry, let’s stop and ask about his condition. Let’s stop for a moment,” he wrote on Twitter.
René Robert was born in 1936 in Switzerland. I fell in love with photography at the age of 12. Studied in Lausanne, moved to Paris in the 1960s. He was widely known for his photographs of flamenco dancers.