Robert Doisneau - "A Champion of Humanist Photography"

Hello photography fans. This week It would have been 108 years since Robert Doisneau was born. Doisneau was a part of this classic era of photojournalism in Europe, part of the same generation as, for example, Cartier Bresson or Robert Capa. He is also responsible for of one of the most well-known romantic pictures in the world. Let’s check out Robert Doisneau.

Robert Doisneau was born in France in 1912. Unfortunately, his parents died when Robert was very young, so he was raised by his aunt (ént). His first contact with art was already during his school years. When he picked up photography at the age of 16, he was said to be pretty shy and content with only photographing (phótogragphing) cobblestone in the beginning. That’s actually pretty interesting because he worked himself up all the way to be  called a champion of humanist photography.

In the 1930s he started selling his first photographs and later started working as an advertising photographer for a Renault car factory, and after that in the Rapho photographic agency.

After the war, he returned to freelance photography for magizines such as Life. Even though he was invited to Magnum By Henri Cartier Bresson, he remained in the Rapho agency for his whole career.

In 1950 DoisneauDoisneau took one of his most famous pictures The Kiss, or the Kiss by Hotel de Ville. The Kiss is an iconic shot of a young couple kissing in the middle of a crowd in Paris. When we look at the composition, there is the kissing pair in the middle of movement, which kind of represents the Paris in 1950s and this romantic idea a lot of people had about Paris.

What is interesting about this picture is not only how iconic it is, but also even though Robert Doisneau was a street photographer, this picture is actually staged. 

He was actually commissioned by Life magazine to photograph a kissing couple in Paris. He later, when asked why it was staged, said “ I would never have dared to photograph people like that. Lovers kissing in the street? Those couples are rarely legitimate.” To be honest since it was an assignment I don’t really mind at all it was staged. And who would be a better person to create a street scene like this than street photographer?

Just like Cartier Bresson, some of his work is centered about geometry. We can find also other photography techniques such as leading lines, or figure to ground and rhythm, and usually those techniques are combined together. The humor in his photography is interesting, since it is not only shot for the sake of a joke but we can also see a great use of photography techniques.

I don't photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.

— Robert Doisneau  

This humor was applied also when photographing celebrities. As, for example, in the  portrait of Pablo Picasso, where he used bread to kind of mimics the fingers, which is funny when you see Picasso’s abstract paintings.

One thing that is interesting about his street photography is he never wanted to ridicule the subjects. Unlike Vivian Mier, who kinda liked photographing people in, let’s say, uncomfortable situations, he for example refused to photograph women punished for sleeping with Germans whose heads had been shaved.

If you like his work, I would recommend to check out his photography books. There are several of them. Let me know what is your favorite image of Robert Doisneau. Until next time.