French Celebrities Bio | Robert Doisneau

Everyone knows at least one of Robert Doisneau’s photographs. Even if you don’t know what the legendary lensman looked like, or indeed know anything about his life and career, you will know his most famous image.

Le baiser de l’hôtel, in which a rather dishevelled, bohemian-looking man nonchalantly takes his woman in his arms for a passionate kiss outside the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, while passers by carry on regardless, is known the world over simply as The Kiss.

The 1950 photo is typical of Doisneau’s reportage-style photography in contemporary Paris, but his early career showed little of the confident approach to photographing strangers. Legend has it that when he first took up amateur photography as a teenager, he was so shy that he only photographed cobblestones.
Born in 1912 in Paris, Doisneau first trained as an engraver and lithographer before becoming a draughtsman in the advertising industry. It was while working at the Atelier Ullman that he seized his chance to become a camera assistant and eventually a staff photographer. After a brief period selling photo stories to the likes of Excelsior magazine, by 1934 he was later on the staff at the Renault factory in Boulogne-Billancourt, where he specialised in advertising photography.

The most fruitful period of his career came after World War Two when, as a freelance with a contract at the Rapho photo agency, his work was published in Life and other international magazines. A stint at Vogue didn’t last – Doisneau was rather fonder of photographing everyday people in situ than glamorous models.

His personal life has a lovely romantic narrative. It was dominated by a marriage to a woman that he met when she was cycling through a village where he was on holiday. He was 22 when they met and they remained together until her death 57 years later in 1993. Doisneau died just six months later.

What Doisneau left behind was a decades-spanning document of French life. He was known as a humble, shy man who never lost touch of his artisan roots despite fame and offered wealth. And, in the Kiss, he left behind an image that seemed to represent a perfect, carefree vision of young French love.

It later emerged that the couple in the photo, although authentic, were asked to pose for the photograph after Doisneau spotted them kissing earlier. They were happy to do so. “Monsieur Doisneau was adorable, very low key, very relaxed,” said the woman, Françoise Delbart years later.

By Katherine Barrau, Monday, 7th of February at 11.45