Robert Doisneau

by Peter Hamilton

The first authorized biography available, Robert Doisneau provides an intimate rich account of the life of the French photographer who captured the streets and elusive spaces of Paris as the city entered the modern era. Drawing not only upon Doisneau's previously unpublished archives but also on conversations with the photographer in his final years, this book examines every aspect of Doisneau's work, including the techniques he used. Emphasized are his periods of engagement with the birth of photojournalism in the 1930s; with humanist social realism in the 1940s and 1950s; and with montage and art brut in the 1960s. The photographs, made by Doisneau on his own and while working for Vogue, Life, and other well-known magazines, reveal how the familiar is swept away, a theme germane to city-dwellers everywhere.