Robert Doisneau

Robert Doisneau by Jean-Claude Gautrand, published by Taschen in 2003, is a compact celebration of one of the great photographers of twentieth-century France: a man who somehow managed to make ordinary streets, ordinary people and ordinary moments look considerably more interesting than most of us manage in real life.

Doisneau is best known for his black-and-white photographs of Paris and its inhabitants: children, lovers, workers, musicians, drinkers, eccentrics, passers-by and people apparently doing absolutely nothing, but doing it in a sufficiently French manner to make it worthy of permanent photographic record.

This Taschen volume brings together a broad selection of his work and places it in the context of his life and career. Jean-Claude Gautrand provides the accompanying text, while the photographs do most of the persuasive work themselves. Doisneau had a remarkable ability to catch humour, tenderness, absurdity and melancholy in scenes that another photographer might simply have walked past on the way to lunch.

His photographs helped create the romantic visual mythology of post-war Paris: cobbled streets, cafés, schoolchildren, bicycles, kisses, old men, stray dogs and citizens apparently surviving perfectly well without smartphones, high-visibility jackets or twenty-four-hour notifications.

Naturally, the Paris in these photographs was not quite as effortlessly charming as nostalgia would have us believe. People were still cold, poor, tired, late for work and occasionally miserable. Doisneau simply had the useful artistic habit of noticing when all of that happened to arrange itself into a good photograph.

There is also something rather refreshing about a photographer whose work relied upon being physically present in the world and paying attention to it. No filters, no endless retakes, no enormous digital archive containing 4,000 nearly identical images of brunch. Just film, timing, observation and the occasional piece of extraordinary luck.

Taschen’s art and photography books have a knack for making serious subjects accessible without requiring the reader to remortgage the house for a vast museum catalogue, and this is a particularly approachable introduction to Doisneau’s work. It is equally suitable for someone already interested in photography or for anyone who simply likes looking at images of a Paris that now exists partly in reality and partly in collective imagination.

A good choice for photographers, Francophiles, Paris enthusiasts, students of twentieth-century visual culture, collectors of Taschen books, or anyone wishing to demonstrate that they appreciate fine art while actually enjoying themselves.

Condition: Very Good. A clean and well-preserved copy with only light signs of previous ownership and handling. In other words, it has been looked at rather than used as structural reinforcement beneath a collapsing wardrobe.

ISBN: 9783822816127.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where the books may be second-hand, but fortunately the photographs were already old when they were new.

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