The suburbs of Paris: the places of the heart

Here it is, the Doisneau that the whole world loved. The ironic, touching, sedentary Doisneau at ease only in the periphery of Paris (and not even in all of them: only in those to the south). Whose favorite places were streets, factories, gatehouses and, as in this case, bistros. Peripheries in which a peripheral humanity moves in which Doisneau, with empathy, showed the misery, the restlessness, the melancholy, however managing to capture the moments of grace, of happiness, the smiles of a moment.

Black and white, shadow and light

In short, to grasp the ambiguous essence of life itself, its being both shadow and light. Or black and white, as the ironic title suggests, of this photo, taken in 1948, Cafe in black and white: here it is, its famous lightness, the result of long waits for the right moment. Sometimes useless, as he liked to remember, because he was forced to give up shooting due to an unexpected intrusion into the field of vision.

The importance of the right moment

​​The opposite of what happened with this photo: «The image portrays a couple in a bistro with a bougnat», he said, «they are not really husband and wife, but actors of the Joinville studies. I ask if I can photograph them, they agree, and here comes the charcoal burner, creating the perfect contrast por the black and white photography».

An all-round portrait of the artist

Many exhibitions have been dedicated to Doisneau but this one is different, because the curator, Gabriel Bauret, has scanned the 450.000 negatives of the archive to distill a selection capable of outlining a full-lenght portrait of the artist: so yes, there are the essential shots but there are also little-known photos, which allow us to discover the lesser-known Doisneau. Like that of commissioned works.

From fashion to publishing: commissioned works

Not only advertising but also publishing: «We did some reportage together, especially for Vogue», said the great photographer Sabine Weiss, but «when one thinks of him, the shots for fashion magazines, although there are some very beautiful ones. Above all, one thinks of his documentary activity on Paris and its suburbs».
Commissions made him uncomfortable, they forced him out of his shell: he was a sedentary who hated to leave his “periphery of him”. «I wasted a lot of energy» he will confess himself talking about those jobs.

The collaboration with Vogue: the gala dinner at the Hôtel de Paris in Biarritz

One can therefore imagine with what spirit, at the request of Vogue, in 1951 he left Paris to go to the Hôtel de Paris of Biarritz, to a gala dinner attended by also the two protagonists who give the title to this photo, The Countess Gaëlle and Monsieur Pedro: the Countess d’Oncieu, in a Lanvin dress, and Monsieur Pedro Corcuera, « whose elegance all of Biarritz has admired for half a century» and which he, the Doisneau of the suburbs, immortalizes out of spite in the exact moment in which his eyes are closed. And we smile.

Working on commission: five years of collaboration with Renault

Looking at this photo you can discover a couple of things that perhaps not everyone knows. The first, as can also be deduced from the title (Publicity shot for Renault, 1935) is that Doisneau also worked on commission. He did it early in his career and never stopped. One of the first clients was the automotive industry.
Between 1934 and 1939 he worked at Renault: five very formative years, during which he made various advertising shots that taught him to master the technique and take care of every detail, because nothing in those photos was left to chance.

The Boulogne-Billancourt workshops

However, there was another reason why Doisneau considered that experience important: in addition to the advertisements, in fact, Renault also asked him to document the activity of the Boulogne-Billancourt workshops. It was then that he discovered the reality of the working class conditions, to which he would always feel close and which, from that moment on, would always enjoy his attention. It was he himself who said that, when the factory was occupied during the strikes of 1936, he would have liked to make a reportage on the demonstrators. He gave up because, as a photographer hired by Renault, he was feared of being taken for a spy.

A peculiar detail

The second thing you notice when you look at this photo is that, if it is true that nothing was left to chance, then in 1935 car advertisements, it must have been important that a smoker was behind the wheel.

A close-up at the “right distance”

What intrigues, in this photo, is not what you see but what you can glimpse. Over time, Robert Doisneau managed to overcome the innate shyness, which had led him to photograph people from a distance, and to find the famous “right distance” which, for him, it meant getting closer but never getting to a close-up. As in this portrait of Mademoiselle Anita, taken in Paris in 1951.

Crop, erase, glimpse: a game of mirrors and reflections

The choice of distance is crucial in the composition of a photo: for him the image had to be easy to read, with a central subject and little information around. Leaving a void at the edges of the frame was, in fact, a habit for photographers of his generation who, unlike those of Magnum, who were intransigent in imposing respect for the edges of the negative on the publisher, they tolerated the cutbacks wanted by the magazine layouts.
Doisneau himself made croppins to eliminate peripheral details that seemed superfluous to him. In this photo, for example, the detail considered superfluous was itself: thanks to a game of mirrors, in fact, the photographer can be seen not once but twice.

Hidden self-portraits

«When he developed the negative», said Francine Deroudille, «my father always took care to lacken his reflection as much as possible, increasing the contrast. In some versions he cropped the image to the point that you can’t see it anymore». isappeared, as in the one chosen for the front page of Libération which announced his death.

The irony of “fate” in a banal summer stroll

Can you see the irony in this photo? Yet there is. It is not seen because it is not the one intended by the author but it is the irony, so called, “of fate”. The day it was taken, Doisneau was walking through the beloved Parisian suburbs, near Ménilmontant. It wasn’t ordinary days, it was the summer of 1944 and Paris had just been liberated from the Nazis: even a trivial walk could turn out to be anything but trivial.

«Can you take us a picture?». A symbolic shot of the Parisian Resistance

The stroller, in fact, but above all his camera, were noticed by a group of freshly won partisans: «Can you take us a picture?». Doisneau had only two rolls of film with him: a group portrait was the last thing he wanted to do. But how could he refuse? He too, in his own way, had participated in the Resistance, forging documents thanks to the techniques learned at the Estienne school of lithography. Reluctantly, however, he accepted, and arranged the men of the Forces françaises de l’intérieur in front of the lens: «the pose is frontal», noted his daughter, Francine Deroudille, «the will subjects to capture the moment. It is clear who are the architects of the Liberation of Paris».

Doisneau’s best shot

And the irony? The irony of fate, as Francine revealed, is that, many years later, her father confessed that this very photo, which he had no intention of taking, was actually the best he had ever taken. He entitled it The Liberation of Paris, The Resistance Fighters of Ménilmontant.

A photograph that is a trick of magic

It’s called Fox-terrier on the Pont des Arts, it was taken in Paris in 1953 and it’s a sleight of hand by the magician Robert Doisneau. Like all magic, it tells us two stories: one can be seen, the other not.

Stories of looks: a photographer, a woman, a painter, a dog and her master

What you see is a story of looks: it begins with a dog looking at a photographer while her master looks at a painter, who in turn looks at a woman, dressed, but portrays her naked. It ends with an unresolved doubt about what the dog’s owner is really looking at.

The invention of an illusion

In the story that is not seen, however, there is a great photographer, very good not only at seizing the moment, as great photographers do, but also at inventing it, like the great artists do, while giving us the illusion, like the great magicians do, poof! that photo is the result of chance. Unlike the magicians, however, Doisneau liked to reveal his tricks.

An unsuspected shyness

Observing it with the eye of a detective like Auguste Dupin, this photo hides the revealing clue of an unsuspected character trait in a “street photographer” like Doisneau: shyness. The clue is distance, all those meters that separate the observing eye from the observed object: three women and two men, in the park, in their festive clothes.

Looking for the right distance

Indeed, Doisneau was empathic, a gift for a photographer, but also shy, an obstacle. He resolved the conflict by seeking, and finally finding the right distance, consistent with his temperament, between himself and the subjects he photographed, without ever getting too close to the faces.
Recalling his first steps (this photo is from 1934) he spoke both of the street school (“That’s where you have to go”) and of the shyness that inhibited him: «To dare to go out with a camera, in a rough place like the road, in contact with people. I didn’t dare to photograph people».

The Rolleiflex: the trick of a shy photographer

He initially developed «a low ground view, photographing details of the road surface». In this the Rolleiflex helped him, allowing him to photograph without holding the camera at eye level, so the subject did not realize he was being photographed. «And yet I had the sensation of seeing people very well. So I launched myself, at the time the public did not refuse». Today the public that loves photography is grateful.

The discipline of waiting for a “fisherman” of images

For the first time a museum is dedicating an exhibition to a fisherman. This is how Robert Doisneau liked to call himself: «Actually», he commented, « my real passion is fishing: photography is just a hobby ». But then he concluded: “To be honest, fishing isn’t all that different from photography“.
And so a joke about fishing turns out to be a truth about photography, which he called the “discipline of waiting“. Waiting, even for a long time, in order to be in the right place at the right time to seize the fish-moment with the hook of the lens.

L’Enfer: an excellent demonic bait

Exactly what happened with the photo you see here: Doisneau took it in Paris, on the Boulevard de Clichy, in 1952, using the grotesque entrance of L’Enfer as a decoy. (from which it took its title), «a cabaret», he said, «where the bourgeois came to seek the thrill of the forbidden». He, on the other hand, went there to cast the hook.