Paris under Occupation it was humiliation

This is the photo that hides the work, such as the forest tree. Doisneau it keeps in memory the "icon", the image which has invaded the calendars and the covers of books for girls: "the lovers of the City Hall. Then it said that we know by heart this picturesque Parisian, accordion, flonflon and popular charm of a black and white nostalgic and a lofty brin... Error! Robert Doisneau (1921-1994) invented a photographic verve unique and extensive, full of love, charm, and psychology. Until mid-April the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson exposes hundreds of ancient drawings made between 1930 and 1966 which give Robert Doisneau its letters of nobility. It shows her search for identity in photography.

The selection of images for many little-known, tends to the closer of the giant, Eugène Atget, which, at the beginning of the 20th century, was meticulously in its "box" pictures of a Paris train change or - at the same time-d-' a Negro Charles taking rag and other rémouleurs heroes of his compositions. Doisneau Immortalizes the Paris of the suburbs with a sentimental approach, but without clumsiness. "My childhood was the vacant lands." I started to do photography to register that I saw every day. I thought that this suburb fuck camp, that it was temporary. Front of the House when I was a kid, there was a dead tree that I was trying to draw. My first photos meet the same need.

The force of evocation of these photos is that they bring the Viewer to sound atmospheres. The first images of the exhibition date of the last years of the war. The final speech of General de Gaulle in August 1944 was yet sounded. But it includes the "Paris outraged!". Paris broken! Paris martyred! "into watching" the fallen"made in 1942, which shows the animal slouching on the road and surrounded by a curious crowd. A symbol according to the photographer in occupied Paris. "Paris under Occupation, it was humiliation." Need to get off the sidewalk to let pass the superb officer German, show his identity card, or open her suitcase.

Favorite corners

Gentilly, is the favourite of Doisneau. This is where is born the son of a bourgeois who seems more attracted by the familiar tobacco bar by "properly" people In 1948 he top perched when it just takes a "Café-tobacco" in Gentilly. The image summarizes his quest. In the foreground, the establishment in corner with a terrace moderated. Outside, on a large motorcycle, a man we can imagine to be the show-off of service. A father through the street with her child in the arms. And behind, in the distance, bars of buildings, huge, installed in huge vacant lots. It is the threat.

Trenet and Greco sang "I remember a street corner today disappeared. There are many corners in Doisneau. In "on the right corner", in 1945, is a building isolated with a kind of Café on the ground floor. Doisneau is placed along the blocks which occupy with their infinite alignment, three quarters of the composition. And lovers We learn that in 1950 the US "life" magazine he commanded reporting on couples who were not reluctant to kiss in public in Paris. The first picture, not cropped, left the beautiful part a voyeur of dos attablé, watching this Kiss become historic. Doisneau told stories. Some have been strong enough to mark the collective imagination. But, paradoxically, it is not always used in the building of the work of the photographer.

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