Born in Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, April 14th, 1912.
Studied lithography at the École Estienne.
1934-1938 - Industrial photographer at the Renault Works.
Called up in 1939, joined the Résistance in the following years.
From 1946 on, free-lance photographer for the Rapho Agency.
Most of his photographs are of people and streetlife in Paris and its suburbs.
Lived in Montrouge, a working-class suburb south of Paris.
Died in 1995.
Source:
http://www.horvatland.com/pages/entrevues/02-doisneau-en_en.htm
Frank Horvat : I'd like to start with some down-to-earth matters, the more profound ones will follow, they can't be avoided. For instance with the fact that you had to earn your living. Some photographers don't have to worry about selling their work, either because they have other sources of income, or because they are brave enough to face deprivation - like Koudelka. Neither has been your case (nor is it mine, for that matter). There were some photos you took simply because you had to make money. Despite this, when one looks through your work of the last 50 years, one doesn't feel any effort to please a client - only the will to say what you had to say. How was this possible? I don't imagine that everytime you pressed the shutter you were saying to yourself: "This shot is for me" or : "This one is to for the client…" Robert Doisneau : I'm not sure that total freedom is such a good thing. When you have to rely on yourself for living, you accept all kinds of assignments. But you cannot help glancing to the right or to the left, as if playing some game with the working hours that you owe your employer - and in the end the photos worth preserving are the ones you stole from his time. Frank Horvat : So you did made a distinction: "This photo is for myself, that one is for the client." I'm bringing it up because it hasn't always been true for me: in the case of some fashion photos, in particular, I often made myself believe that I was doing them for my self-expression. Robert Doisneau : That was your cleverness, your professionalism. When I was photographing fashion for Vogue, against a white background, I was only acting a part. Watching a fashion show never gave me any particular emotion, never made me think : "I must absolutely photograph that woman, in that dress". Besides, models weren't as friendly as they are now, they always seemed to look down on the little man at the other side of the camera, who was only trying to get his photo. Frank Horvat : Still, you told me that you become very involved in some projects, that you would consider now as a loss of time… Robert Doisneau : : I've made every possible mistake. Because I don't like to obey orders and I always question what I'm told. So I have to try out everything for myself, and that has lead me into many dead ends. For a whole year - for instance - I tried to build a machine to unroll cylinders, in order to reproduce the bas-reliefs made by some farmer, on some pots : in fact I wanted to flatten them out, so that they could be seen at a glance. One had to be really stubborn to keep trying - but I was thinking of Marey‚ about whom I had a vague notion. Though in fact I hadn't done much reading and just plunged into this like a brute. Frank Horvat : I could say the same about myself. All I knew about other photographers' work were a few photos published by magazines. Robert Doisneau : I had seen some of Brassaï's work, but had never heard of Kertesz or Atget - though I had worked in some of Atget's locations, such as Porte d'Italie or the Bièvre valley, and even with a wooden camera on a tripod, like the one he used. But I didn't get to know his work until much later. Frank Horvat : It is interesting to compare your first book on the suburbs with the one published recently by Delpire. Many of the photos are the same, but the whole seems different, as if something essential had become clear. Robert Doisneau : At the time I wasn't aware of it. I only realised it now, while preparing my exhibition in Saint-Denis. It will be my last exhibition - or at any rate the last one of this kind. As it happens, I always came back to Saint-Denis, even though it's a long way from my own suburb. This community is an extraordinary mixture, exactly the kind I like : people from all origins, a basilica where the kings of France lie buried, a communist town hall twenty yards further, a canal, a motorway, some huge public housing projects and endless rows of small suburban houses. It's the juxtaposition that fascinates me - in fact, all my photos are self-portraits, in the sense that I always show people living in the same absurd surroundings as myself. My own suburb was one of two-storey houses, rather grey and dumb, but full of nooks, recesses, makeshift repairs, inhabited by people living between the street and the bistro. Here and there a small workshop, like my father's plumbing business. From my window, in the early morning, I watched the workmen coming to be hired, then going out on their assignments. If they had a few minutes to spare, they would have a drink at the bistro, then walk out slightly dizzy, fetch the handcart and be on their way to the job, which was sometimes far off, with the apprentice pulling between the shafts and the journeyman pushing the cart from behind. Of course they knew me well, sometimes I came along and watched them, soldering is a beautiful sight. Frank Horvat : Why did you say the exhibition in Saint-Denis will be your last? Robert Doisneau : The museum in Saint-Denis is an old Carmelite convent, a place filled with ghosts : Louise de France, the daughter of Louis the XVth, had resided there, but the museum also keeps souvenirs of Louise Michel, thepasionaria of the Paris Commune - again an extraordinary juxtaposition. The idea for my show came partly from the charm of this place. Originally the curator wanted to present the photos I had taken in 1943 and 1944, during the German occupation. It had been a very cold winter, the canal was frozen, children were running on it, gathering coal fallen from the cranes. I suggested I would show ten of my photos from that period, plus 50 that I would take of Saint-Denis in the present. The project took me two years, you don't really get more than one photo a day, and there are days when you don't get any. My recent pictures are more bare, less anecdotal than the old ones. Nowadays people understand faster, they no longer need a story with a beginning, a middle and an end : the beginning will do, they can guess the end. If I said "it will be my last exhibition", it's because four or five years from now I'll no longer have the energy for such an undertaking. I don't really know how it impresses the general public, people tell me, "it's beautiful" - but those who say so are my friends. All I know is that I did it with my last bit of cheek, with whatever means I have left. | ||||
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Frank Horvat : You say your old photos were more anecdotal. That was actually what I held against them at the time. It must be said that I was an unconditional follower of Cartier-Bresson. When I first came to Paris, I had the nerve to show him some of my Rolleiflex photos. He exclaimed that if God had wanted us to photograph with a 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 camera, he would have put eyes on our bellies. So I bought a Leica and tried to follow his advice, at least as far as I understood it. But that made me intolerant : for instance I found that your photos had too much anecdote and not enough composition, I only saw the drawbacks of the 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 format, the fact that it made you compose around the centre of the image, while neglecting what happened at the edges . Only much later their real significance dawned on me, and it was like a revelation. From then on, the people in your photos began to exist for me, I knew what they were thinking or going to do. Each of them seemed to emit a ray of energy, and your composition consisted in the interplayof these energies. Of course I should have grasped it much earlier. Robert Doisneau : It's partly my own fault. I felt that people didn't know how to read photos, so I thought, "I'll be kind to them, overly so, as I would be with a handicapped person." That's why I resorted to all those little jokes, those sequences, anecdotes, all that cartoon style. Now things are different, people understand fast, you don't have to load the image with heavy symbols, as if to hit the spectator with a bludgeon. Frank Horvat : In fact it's not only the people in your photos that emit energy, but even the rabbit or the monkey … | ||||
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Robert Doisneau : … the houses… Frank Horvat : … and the statues, the characters on the posters. They all seem to have ideas and intentions. Their rays of energy intersect with each other and with the rays coming from the humans. Robert Doisneau : The advantage we have, compared to painters and writers, is that we never lose contact with the rough side of life. It is a lesson in humility and it keeps us from some pitfalls. But above all it nourishes us. Other people's vitality nourishes us, without their knowledge. It has done me good to work on this project in Saint-Denis, to find myself in the streets again, face to face with people. Though I must say that I found them less friendly than twenty years ago, possibly because of today's photographers, who hold their cameras like weapons - so of course the rabbit on the other side doesn't feel too good. I wouldn't dare shoot as they do, I don't have William Klein's nerve. Sometimes the camera pulls me along, but once I've got my photo I wonder, "How am I going to cope with this now, how can I explain it to these people?" Frank Horvat : I guess that when Klein looks through his view-finder, he mainly sees shapes - while you never forget that they are real people. Except possibly in some of your photos of lovers, where their role seems to take over. To me your lovers look a bit like actors, whereas the characters in the background remain more real, I can always imagine what goes on in their minds. Robert Doisneau : I had a few problems with the law. It appears that people have rights about their own image, and this often prevents me from catching their spontaneity. So I must stop them and say, "I noticed you while passing by, would you mind kissing again?" That's what happened with the "Hôtel de Ville lovers", they re-enacted their kiss. Those with the grocer were a couple I hired. | ||||
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Frank Horvat : One can tell. Robert Doisneau : In order to show an amiable aspect of Paris, I presented little "Parisian" scenes, like in those cabaret shows called "Paris will forever be Paris". You may find them a bit soppy, but at the time they sold. The "Hôtel de Ville lovers" were part of a series, on which I had already worked for a week and which I had to complete with two or three photos of that kind. But the fact that they were set up never bothered me. After all, nothing is more subjective than l'objectif (the French word for "lens"), we never show things as they "really"are. The world I was trying to present was one where I would feel good, where people would be friendly, where I could find the tenderness I longed for. My photos were like a proof that such a world could exist. | ||||
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Frank Horvat : Roland Barthes called it the studium. It's what the photographer intends to express when taking a photo. But beyond this intention, there is the miracle that we expect - and sometimes manage to capture. That is our real motivation. Robert Doisneau : Yes, the expectation of a miracle. It's very childish, but at the same time it's almost like an act of faith. We find a backdrop and wait for the miracle. I remember a backdrop that never worked for me, possibly because I didn't wait long enough, or didn't return to it often enough. In the foreground you can see the steps of Saint Paul's church, the background is a perfect faubourg, as you imagine them from literature or movies. I frame it in my viewfinder, from rue de Turenne to a shop called Le Gant d'Or, and wait there for an hour, sometimes two, thinking, "my God, something is bound to happen". I imagine events I would like to photograph, one wilder than the other. But nothing happens, nothing. Or if it does - bang - it's so different from what I expected that I miss it. The miracle did take place, but I wasted it, because I didn't pay the right kind of attention. When you are tired, you become unable to react, your emotion is no longer available. Frank Horvat : I had the same experience, in the streets of New York. I would think, "this is a good frame, I'll wait here". But I'm not the fisherman type, like you. If the miracle didn't happen, I would lose patience and move on. Still, I wonder if the expectations raised in those places may not bear fruits elsewhere, at other moments. Like a mould that takes shape in your mind, and remains ready to take in the miracle, whenever it comes. Robert Doisneau : You're right. You move on and you keep that tension, and at the same time that inner calm that makes you ready to catch. Another good preparation is night-time. When I am in horizontal position, my brain gets irrigated, like the cork of a wine bottle that's laid flat. That activates my imagination and stimulates my desire to go out and use my mind. So I rise and go out, eager to see and to marvel. Marvelling is something we don't learn at school - and that isn't given to us every day! Frank Horvat : I have a down to earth question to ask : you found that wonderful title, "Three seconds of eternity"… Robert Doisneau : It was borrowed from Jardin, a poem by Jacques Prévert… Frank Horvat : … but in fact the time you spend with your camera, observing your subjects, moving around them, is obviously far longer than the sum of your exposure times. How long when compared to your lifetime? How many days of a week, how many hours in a shooting day? Robert Doisneau : Plenty. I couldn't count all my hours of mad hope, while expecting the miracle to happen. Hardly a week goes by without at least one day of photography. But sometimes I have the feeling that I'm hounded by a curse. It took me five years to get sacked by Renault - though I had done all I could to that purpose - and three months later war was declared and my freedom was lost again. Now, that I don't have to waste my time with advertising photos, or with complying to the demands of magazines, my wife's illness has fallen on me. For the last ten years, this has detained me from using my time as I wanted. It's like a fatality. Still, I believe that constraint, and the feeling of exasperation that comes with it, can also become a stimulus to create. Frank Horvat : A photographer's time is peculiar. A musician may rehearse ten hours a day, writers and painters often work regularly, from such hour to such. For us, the time spent with our cameras is relatively short. Though, as you say, our creativity might build up in the intervals. Robert Doisneau : Constraint increases my persistence. I would keep saying to myself, "I will manage to complete this exhibition in Saint-Denis, even if I can only work on Saturdays - which is the day someone else looks after my wife - even if I can't be on the spot in the early morning, or if I can't come back there at night. Maybe this constraint brought a kind of unity to my photos. Frank Horvat : A build-up of the desire to see. Like the cap on the hunter falcon's head. Robert Doisneau : That cap would be an exact description of my feeling. Another thing I feel is that I'm walking around with ghosts : Cendrars, Prévert, Pontrémoli, my departed friends. Every time I caught an image, it was intended for one of them, and it was to them I showed it first. It was like repaying a debt, they were the ones who taught me to see those things. Now they are ahead of me, gone. But sometimes, while I walk, one of Prévert's songs is at my side. Frank Horvat : Coming back to what you said about constraint : photography, after all, is an alternation of opening and closing. Like the shutter. When you say, "I don't speak foreign languages, I don't like to go on big trips", this is a closing, but a closing that you need and that allows other openings. Robert Doisneau : There are like rules we impose on ourselves, rules of a very complicated game, with forbidden areas into which we may not step. Like those lines that children draw on the ground and over which they jump, with their feet crossed : hup heaven! hup hell! It's like hopscotch. I set limits to myself, I avoid photographing certain things - for instance violence. I know that it exists and that some photographers are good at showing it, I don't say they are wrong, but it's not for me, that niche of the market is too crowded. Marvelling, on the other hand, is a mission that few photographers have chosen. We can marvel at an object, a building, a tree. A human being can be even more marvellous, as we don't know what 's going on inside his head. Frank Horvat : Talking about hopscotch: you don't seem to mind having your photos edited by other people, or even cropped without your consent. Few photographers would agree to that. Is it again like hopscotch, a kind of opportunity for chance? On the other hand you are very lucid about your own work, you seem to know very well what choices and what croppings you prefer. Robert Doisneau : People have a certain idea of me, which means that they expect me to produce a certain kind of images. For me this is fine, never mind if the photos they pick are not always my favourites. Our favourite images are like children who were difficult to bring up, we feel more attached to them because we had to try harder. But they are not necessarily the most successful, some outsider may be a better judge, when he decides: "This photographer is at his best in these photos, so these are the ones that should represent his work." You ought to trust his judgement. Frank Horvat : To the point of letting him crop your photo? Robert Doisneau : Never mind. I got used to having the sides cropped off when I was working in the square format, which doesn't coincide with the proportions of a magazine page. You pointed out, rightly, that I didn't always control what happened on the sides. But this is an imperfection that I accept, it adds a little - shall I say "truth"? No, it's not quite the right word… Frank Horvat : Authenticity? Credibility? Something that makes the viewer think: "this photographer isn't very clever, so he must be telling the truth"? Is it that? Robert Doisneau : Maybe. At the edge you may see an onlooker, or someone stopping by. That's fine with me, the photo will not seem too well constructed, there will be something left to chance, as one leaves a share for the poor. At festive meals, in times past, people used to leave an empty chair, so that an unexpected visiter could find his place. Frank Horvat : After all, the Rollei's drawbacks had their good sides. Another advantage was that by holding the camera on his stomach, the photographer seemed less aggressive. Robert Doisneau : You ended up bowing before the subject, as if in prayer. Whereas with a 35mm camera, you put him straight in your line of fire - that is in your line of sight, so as to shoot right into his face. And if you aren't quick enough, this may annoy him and he will agress you. I understand it now, as more and more often people tend to photograph me, it's like the attractiveness of old ruins, you become picturesque without wanting to. So I realise what it feels to have such a machine pointed at you : if you stick your finger up your nose - click - your fellow photographer won't miss it. | ||||
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Frank Horvat : Was this bistro scene taken with a 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 camera? I find it miraculous, I can see six, seven, eight rays of energy, as many as there are people. One wonders how you managed to see all that at the same time. Robert Doisneau : Maybe I was drunk. No, in fact I wasn't. Again it shows an absurd backdrop, a completely stupid game. But the atmosphere was lively. Frank Horvat : Even the lady on the poster seems to be involved in the scene. If I cover her with my finger… Robert Doisneau : Yes, a character would be missing. It's true, it is a miracle. It was a world that I knew well and where I felt at ease. Before you can take a photo like that, you have to be accepted by those people, come and drink with them night after night, become part of the place - until they completely forget your presence. Maybe it was with a Rolleiflex, I'm not sure. But it's a good picture, there is the right amount of chance, but at the same time it is well balanced. A joy that you are offered once in a while and that you must not miss. Frank Horvat : You were offered quite a few such joys, and you didn't miss them. But nowadays you feel the need to express yourself in writing, as if there was something important that photographs cannot convey. Robert Doisneau : I write as I talk. Every Sunday morning I write five or six or seven letters, it comes easily, as if the people I'm writing to were in front of me. But when it's for print I feel paralysed. My vocabulary is limited, my knowledge of the French language is full of gaps. I'm ashamed at the thought that some typist, working for the publisher, will have to decipher my handwriting and may laugh at my mistakes. But the need to write exists. Maybe because I listen a lot : when you photograph, it's not only your eyesight that's involved, but also your hearing, and even your sense of smell, which may be compared to an awareness of music, a kind of short-cut between your surroundings and your emotion. What photography didn't give me was the ability to record such things on film : so now I try, timidly, with my poor faulty memory, to put them in writing. With a little humour if I can, humour is a way of expressing emotions with modesty. When what you're looking at is too tender, or too cruel, you take refuge in humour, it avoids seeming immodest. Frank Horvat : Several photographers that I admire feel the need to express themselves by other means. Cartier-Bresson draws, Boubat plays the piano, Robert Frank and William Klein make films. As if, at some stage in their lives, they had reached the limits of photography. Robert Doisneau : Possibly many people, towards the end of their lives, feel the need to write. Professor Gosset, a famous surgeon, made that remark to me. We cannot accept the thought of our brutal disappearance - so we try to leave some trace of ourselves, to show some of the things we loved. Writing, just as photography, expresses a desire to survive - La Survivance, the title of Boubat's book, wasn't bad. As a child I used to dream of film-making, until I realised that I wouldn't have enough authority to direct a team. So I said to myself that gleaning wild images could be at least as meaningful as creating fiction. Frank Horvat : "Fractions of time snatched from eternity", as you put it in one of your own titles. Robert Doisneau : A memory from my youth comes back to me. You go into the woods on a bike, with a girl. There is the smell of heather, you can hear the wind in the fir trees, you don't dare tell her about your love, but you feel happy, as if you were floating above the ground. Then you look at the clouds beyond the trees and they are fleeting. And you know that within an hour you'll have to go home, that tomorrow will be a working day. You wish you could stop that moment for ever, but you can't, it is bound to end. So you take a photo, as if to challenge time. Maybe the girl will move to another town and you will never see her again, or you will see her changed, tired, humiliated by her everyday life, working as a salesgirl in some shop, with a boss always shouting at her. To me, this desire to preserve the moment seems justified, in spite of that German priest mentioned by Gisèle Freund, who pretends that the photographic image is a sacrilege. Frank Horvat : Still, he wasn't altogether wrong. Did you always take along your Rolleiflex, when you went into the woods with a girl? I don't believe that you can live the moment fully, and still preserve it in a photograph. You must choose between the one and the other. Robert Doisneau : Yes, we are like taxidermists, stuffing dead birds, that's where the sacrilege lies. But photography may allow us to share some happiness with others. Frank Horvat : It must be said that you don't have much reason to be concerned by this problem. You are not one of those who photograph their wife giving birth, or their mother on her death bed , or themselves masturbating in front of a mirror. Robert Doisneau : What I see around me seems to me more interesting than my small self. I would rather be an observer - no, not exactly an observer, I don't watch other people through a magnifying glass, as if they were insects - let me say a contemporary, living at their rythme and sharing their constraints. I certainly wouldn't photograph my wife in a hospital, it would be wrong, nor myself naked in front of a mirror. I don't have any desire to do that. Frank Horvat : Another niche of the market that's getting too crowded! Robert Doisneau : : I wonder what the young will find next. In countries with high human density, they are on the look-out for some gimmick that may allow them to stand out in a crowd : something clever and noisy, that will titillate the nerves of a public all too saturated with images. Like those Japanese who draw figures on their breasts or their hindquarters. They were practically born with a camera in hand, so if they want to get published they have to produce something really shocking. Frank Horvat : What's left to them? Discovering the world through photography was given to your generation - and to a lesser extent to mine. That won't take place again, you can't repeat Columbus's voyage. What point would there be in retaking the photos you took in the suburbs? Robert Doisneau : Besides, the suburbs I photographed have disappeared. Frank Horvat : But even if they hadn't, there would be no reason to photograph them again. What's already in the box can't be caught again - maybe that's where the sacrilege lies. How can a photographer look at the Paris suburbs without thinking of your photos? It's true that a new type of suburbs has been grafted onto the old ones, but at the same time our capacity to marvel has been worn out. When you brought your pictures to Cendrars, he must have been surprised by what he saw, he may have said, "I've never seen anything like it in photography!" Nowadays, you can't show any photo to anyone, without getting some reaction like: "Yes, I know!". Robert Doisneau : It's true that our sensitivity has been hardened. But there may be new ways of seeing. In your colour portraits, for instance, one is reminded of paintings. Colour can possibly bring something new. Frank Horvat : So if the devil offered you a new start - as he did to Faust - would you accept the deal? Robert Doisneau : I don't know. There is that word : "already". Life has gone by so fast, despite all the misery, all the moments I wouldn't want to live again. Now it's behind me - already. There comes a time when you have to fade into the background. It's not up to me, now, to imagine new ways to photograph, it's their business, let them cope with it, for God's sake! There may be new answers, different ones. In fact my own recent photos of Saint-Denis are different from the ones I took for Cendrars, inasmuch as they imply more than they describe. In the future, the implying could be even more subtle, for even more sophisticated viewers - while avoiding the slickness of advertising, which is the greatest danger, but also the shrillness of television. Before agriculture, people used to gather their food - which could be compared to my kind of photography. Then came the sowing, the harvesting and the breeding, of which commercial photography would be the equivalent. The purpose of these techniques is to produce well-packaged images, based on scientifical knowledge of people's sensitivity, with planned costs and profits, a computerised balance of light, a little more here, a little less there, so as to turn out a reliable, immediately digestible product. But that's not my cup of tea. I've done my share. | ||||
| Paris, November 1987 | ||||
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