“I had fun throughout my lifetime, building my own small theatre.”

– Robert Doisneau

Photographer Doisneau (1922 – 1994) captured the marvels of daily Parisian life with an ever-playful eye. 

He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism.

Raised by his aunt, he studied arts and crafts from a young age, and experimented with photography aged 16. While working at an advertising agency in the late 1920s, he soon progressed to become a staff photographer; this would be the start of an illustrious career. Doisneau soon had his work published in magazines and worked on prestigious advertising and photojournalistic campaigns. Life altered at the breakout of the Second World War, he was recruited as both a soldier and photographer for the French Resistance.

He is predominantly known for his unassuming, often surreal, and light-hearted portrayal of life on Paris streets; a preferred focus opposed to high fashion. One of his most well-known works, classic to his style, is Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (Kiss by the Town Hall), showing a kissing couple embracing on the streets of Paris in 1950.

Always charmed by his subjects, he enjoyed finding amusing juxtapositions or oddities of human nature. 

One of my favourite images taken by Robert Doisneau is that of Jacques Prevert who was an important French poet and noted screenwriter sitting in a Park with his dog.

Three years after his death on April 1, 1994 in Paris, a photo gallery in his name was opened in Gentilly, France.

“The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.”

– Robert Doisneau