The great humanist photographer who immortalized Parisian street life
Excerpt from the book 'Robert Doisneau' by Jean-Claude Gautrand
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Doisneau's legacy is a few minutes of eternity frozen onto photographic paper: a few minutes of wonder and emotion through which he contrives to tell us, image by image, stories full of poetry and humour. He enchants us by his capacity to communicate the fleeting but integral relation of complicity between the photographer and the man or woman that he photographs: `One should take a photo only when one feels full of love for one's fellow-man'. But careful analysis reveals a depth and reflective quality in his work that undoubtedly modify and enrich our sense of it. His humour is perhaps a key to this interpretation. Doisneau is an intuitive master of the absurd and unusual; so often, the slightest divergence from the conventional or the slenderest allusion contrives a completely new meaning. Like many a humourist, Doisneau is much more serious than one first assumes. `Life is by no means happy, but we still have humour, a sort of hiding-place in which the emotion that we feel is imprisoned,' he said.
Throughout his long life, Doisneau excelled at capturing the real, but usually softened it with the a dose of cauterizing humour. `Humour is a form of modesty, a way of not describing things, of touching on them delicately, with a wink. Humour is both mask and discretion, a shelter where one can hide. You suggest a thing with the lightest or most mocking of touches, it seems as though it hasn't been mentioned, yet the thing has been said all the same...'
Wearing his heart and humour on his sleeve, Doisneau plucked from the urban streets a bouquet of instants, encounters and scenes, and made from them a world of his own. And he lived to see that world irremediably transformed. Sarcelles, he said, was now `an idiotic backdrop where one can no longer play, a hard mineral backdrop; you can scratch a heart into the soft plaster of Montreuil, but not into the concrete of Sarcelles'. Always the loner, Doisneau has continued the rounds of his own chosen area between Paris, Montrouge and Gentilly, rarely wasting a shot, and always obtaining the consent of his protagonists: `One of the great joys of my career has been to see and speak to people I don't know. Very often these simple people are the sweetest souls and generate an atmosphere of poetry all by themselves...I have often taken photos of people just standing still, people willing to be taken who stare into the lens. I realised that these people so simply portrayed were often more eloquent like that than caught in mid-gesture. It leaves the onlooker space to imagine.'
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
Doisneau's legacy is a few minutes of eternity frozen onto photographic paper: a few minutes of wonder and emotion through which he contrives to tell us, image by image, stories full of poetry and humour. He enchants us by his capacity to communicate the fleeting but integral relation of complicity between the photographer and the man or woman that he photographs: `One should take a photo only when one feels full of love for one's fellow-man'. But careful analysis reveals a depth and reflective quality in his work that undoubtedly modify and enrich our sense of it. His humour is perhaps a key to this interpretation. Doisneau is an intuitive master of the absurd and unusual; so often, the slightest divergence from the conventional or the slenderest allusion contrives a completely new meaning. Like many a humourist, Doisneau is much more serious than one first assumes. `Life is by no means happy, but we still have humour, a sort of hiding-place in which the emotion that we feel is imprisoned,' he said.
Throughout his long life, Doisneau excelled at capturing the real, but usually softened it with the a dose of cauterizing humour. `Humour is a form of modesty, a way of not describing things, of touching on them delicately, with a wink. Humour is both mask and discretion, a shelter where one can hide. You suggest a thing with the lightest or most mocking of touches, it seems as though it hasn't been mentioned, yet the thing has been said all the same...'
Wearing his heart and humour on his sleeve, Doisneau plucked from the urban streets a bouquet of instants, encounters and scenes, and made from them a world of his own. And he lived to see that world irremediably transformed. Sarcelles, he said, was now `an idiotic backdrop where one can no longer play, a hard mineral backdrop; you can scratch a heart into the soft plaster of Montreuil, but not into the concrete of Sarcelles'. Always the loner, Doisneau has continued the rounds of his own chosen area between Paris, Montrouge and Gentilly, rarely wasting a shot, and always obtaining the consent of his protagonists: `One of the great joys of my career has been to see and speak to people I don't know. Very often these simple people are the sweetest souls and generate an atmosphere of poetry all by themselves...I have often taken photos of people just standing still, people willing to be taken who stare into the lens. I realised that these people so simply portrayed were often more eloquent like that than caught in mid-gesture. It leaves the onlooker space to imagine.'
Page [1] [2]
Robert Doisneau
Flexicover, 14 x 19.5 cm (5.5 x 7.7 in.), 192 pages
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$ 9.99
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$ 9.99
The life and work of the great humanist photographer
Prévert at a Café Table, Quai Saint-Bernard, Paris 5e, 1955