Robert Doisneau

1912 — 1994

Robert Doisneau began his career in photojournalism in 1932 with a story in Excelsior magazine. By the time it ended, with his death six decades later, he was among the most famous and revered photographers ever to emerge from France. Doisneau was chiefly interested in street photography, capturing people by chance — or sometimes by setup, as in the case of the lovers in the world-famous 1950 picture Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, which would later become subject to a very public court case brought by a couple who believed themselves the subjects of the candid picture (Doisneau won the case after revealing he had asked a young couple in the street to recreate a kiss he'd witnessed moments earlier, thus destroying the myth that Kiss had been a classic candid).

In the 2000s, the picture sold at auction for €155,000. Doisneau, though, claimed to be uninterested in making money, despite an extensive period of commercial photography shooting for Life and other publications. In 1948, he briefly worked for Vogue, and turned down an invitation to join Magnum Photos, which had been co-founded by Doisneau's friend and much-celebrated contemporary, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Doisneau's Parisian street scenes became postcard staples in the latter half of the twentieth century. He won the Kodak Prize and the Niépce Prize, has had parks, schools and galleries in France named in his honour, and has been published countless times in both life and death. Doisneau died in 1994, shortly after the death of his wife Pierrette. He remains a national treasure.