Born in Marijampolė, present-day Lithuania, Bidermanas arrived in France in 1930 to become a painter.
Izis became a major figure in the mid-century French movement of humanist photography — also exemplified by Brassaï, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Sabine Weiss[1] and Ronis — with "work that often displayed a wistfully poetic image of the city and its people.
"[2] For his first book, Paris des rêves (Paris of Dreams), Izis asked writers and poets to contribute short texts to accompany his photographs, many of which showed Parisians and others apparently asleep or daydreaming.
[2] Izis joined Paris Match in 1950 and remained with it for twenty years, during which time he could choose his assignments.
[3] Shot mostly in Paris but also in Lyon, Marseille and Toulon, the photographs are "affectionate and nostalgic, but also deeply melancholic" with "a desolate undercurrent", forming a work that is "profound, moving and extraordinary".