RANGELEY – On the first day of winter, the photographer Madeleine Marie de Sinéty Behrman died at her home in Rangeley, Maine.
She was born in 1934 at the Château de Valmer in the Loire Valley in France. The last quarter century, she has lived in the state of Maine. She did her primary work in France, Uganda and Maine. For a span of 30 years, she photographed the transformations of Poilley, an agricultural community in northwest France, returning many times to share those transformations with the villagers who were not merely her subjects but who became part of her extended family.
Similarly, her work in Uganda depicts the lives of communities close to the land, the births, labors, ceremonials, sicknesses and deaths of people with whom she lived. In Maine, she was drawn to photographing elemental occupations—woodcutting with horse teams, sculpture, families at work and play, mothers and children.
For the last 25 years she worked indefatigably despite surviving intermittent recurrences of breast cancer. Like any other misfortune or fortune in her life, she stitched it into her photographic oeuvre.
A selection of her work is currently in a major exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, which has also published a book, Madeleine de Sinéty: Photographs. Her work has also been the subject of a solo exhibition at the French National Library in Paris, France, and featured in such publications as Photo District News, The New York Times, and the international poetry annual, Fulcrum.
She is predeceased by her husband Daniel Behrman, a writer and journalist; son Thomas Behrman, a poet, and sister Thérèse de Sinéty Trueba.
She is survived by her son Peter Behrman de Sinety, a writer and teacher at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, and by her siblings Chantal de Richemont, Marie de l’Estoile and Bertrand de Sinéty.
Family and friends are invited to call at St. Luke’s Catholic Church, Wednesday evening, Dec. 28, from 6-8 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Thursday morning, Dec. 29 at 11 a.m. from the St. Luke’s Catholic Church, Rangeley, with Fr. Paul Plante officiating. Following Mass, a comfort reception will be held in the church vestry, hosted by the Catholic Women’s Club.
Those who desire may give remembrance gifts to the Rangeley Friends of the Arts c/o Pam Ellis PO Box 227 Rangeley, Maine 04970. Condolences and tributes may be shared with her family on her memorial wall at www.wilesrc.com. Arrangements are in the care of the Wiles Remembrance Center 137 Farmington Falls Rd., (Rtes. 2 & 27) Farmington.
An amazingly talented woman who didn’t let anything get in the way of enjoying life. She often met her struggle with cancer with great humor and acceptance as I remember her painting her bald head as an Easter Egg at Saddleback’s Easter Day Parade! Many blessings to all who helped her in the final stages of her battle. She is free of her body and in a more peaceful place.