Le baiser de l´hotel de ville, 1950

Robert Doisneau grew up in the southern suburbs of Paris and never left. Trained as a lithographer at the École Estienne, he took his first photographs in 1929 and quickly grasped the power of the photographic image. A formative apprenticeship with sculptor and photographer André Vigneau in 1931 introduced him to the artistic world that would define his career. After working as an advertising photographer at Renault — from which he was dismissed for persistent lateness — he took the decisive step of going freelance in 1939. During the Occupation, commissions were scarce; he used his graphic skills to forge documents for the Resistance. After the Liberation he joined the Rapho agency, published regularly in Life, Picture Post and Regards, and won both the Kodak Prize (1949) and the Niepce Prize (1956). His circle of friends included Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Prévert and Daniel Pennac. In his final decade he achieved the kind of popular recognition that seemed to genuinely astonish him. He died on April 1st, 1994, and is buried beside his wife Pierrette in Raizeux-en-Beauce.

"I've never really thought about why I took photographs. In reality, it's a desperate struggle against the idea that we're going to disappear." (Doisneau, 1991)