For decades, Paris streets, in which Parisians lived day and night to escape small, shabby and decrepit lodgings, offered the best of theatre. Often referred to as a ‘humanist photographer’, Doisneau’s pictures focused on people by making the private and the personal visible. What he enjoyed most was to show all the facets of Paris even if he had a particular fondness for Paris’s children and its working class,” says Deroudille.
“He felt comfortable everywhere, in the poor areas and the posh districts of Paris. Paris has this ability of making you happy, it certainly made him very happy,” reveals Deroudille. “Paris has this intrinsic beauty which touches everyone who visits or lives here. Doisneau documented Paris’s evolution from the 1930s up to the late 1980s he saw and often welcomed both social and architectural changes. “He was in awe of Paris and his love never faltered until his death in 1994,” says Deroudille. Robert Doisneau’s photographs are intimately associated with Paris at a time when the city was the world capital of arts and culture. It encapsulates the world’s view of Paris as the city of love and freedom.” How did Doisneau explain his picture’s sudden and universal success? “We all realised that it represented a perfect fantasy. Doisneau wasn’t convinced but all the young people at the Rapho agency where he worked were so enthusiastic that he accepted.” The success was instant and global. “And then, 30 years later, in the early 1980s, a young publisher suggested to publish it again, in poster format. “He thought it was well composed but nothing more” says his daughter. Doisneau himself didn’t think it such an extraordinary picture.
However, after it was shot, and published in Life Magazine, the picture remained just one of many in the very large Doisneau portfolio (today totalling 450,000 negatives, and managed by his two daughters Francine and Annette). Even in New York’s streets, couples weren’t seen kissing, and certainly never with such carefree abandon,” says Francine Deroudille. “At the time, American magazines were very keen on Paris stories, especially stories covering the life in Paris streets where people behaved much more freely than anywhere in America. Truth here lies in the beauty of the impulse and a spontaneity that is closely linked to the French spirit and its capital city. Who cares about authenticity? The sentiments showed in the picture are authentic. But, we, sharing Doisneau’s gaze, stop in our tracks in front of this picture: the immediacy of it, the young bodies’ movement and the place and time, Paris, 1950, cast a spell on the viewer.
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