You have undoubtedly seen his photographs, even if you never knew the photographer’s name. But now you have a chance to discover the life and work of Robert Doisneau. Believe me, both are endlessly fascinating and will resonate with the emotions of any European — from the United Kingdom to the citizens of the former Soviet Union.
The French photographer Robert Doisneau (1912–1994) will be unveiled to you from 31 October 2025 at the La Boverie Museum in Liège. The road leading there from the Central Station — the masterpiece of Santiago Calatrava — has finally been cleared of construction debris and enlivened by the long-awaited tram line. Four hundred photographs and collages have been selected by curators from his studio in the Paris suburb of Montrouge, chosen from among 450,000 works, and his daughters Ann and Françoise have been invited to the opening of the Belgian exhibition. Françoise has devoted her life to preserving her father’s legacy. Françoise has often spoken about him, while Ann has remained more silent — like their mother, Pierrette Mesney, the “quiet centre” of the photographer’s life, who shared fifty years with her husband. Doisneau moved among the intellectual elite of France, who were not always “good boys” in their private lives. Although Robert awoke to fame after the publication of his now-iconic photograph “Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville” (The Kiss by the Town Hall, 1950), he himself remained a modest man, deeply devoted to his family — a man before whom painters, writers, poets and ordinary workers from the French mines all opened their hearts.
“Observe life with the patience of a fisherman. Always keep the door open to the unexpected. Always stop when you’re told there’s nothing to see. Look with equal interest at the strong and the downtrodden. Do not avert your gaze from misfortune, poverty, or suffering, but keep a compassionate, understanding eye, capable of recognising courage, dignity, and sometimes grace in everyone. Gather moments of encounter and connection; elicit smiles, and at times laughter — the laughter that consoles us in all things.”
— The artistic manifesto of Robert Doisneau
This large-scale project seeks to share with you not merely anecdotes from the life of a remarkable man, but a philosophy of living — a way of seeing, behaving, and being free. Credit must be given to the Belgian exhibition leader, Tempora, whose presentation is exquisite — tasteful, engaging, and captivating from beginning to end, using various media intelligently and with restraint.
The exhibition opens with a series of street photographs of children — images that stir a storm of emotions. The children, often poorly dressed, somehow inspire envy: what an extraordinary time they lived in, how genuine their expressions were, and how free their hands were from gadgets. They discovered the world on the streets of Paris, earning bruises and gathering all sorts of experience — but experience that was their own, authentic and unfiltered.
Doisneau’s own childhood was far from easy. His father was killed in the First World War, and his mother died when he was just eight. Yet there was in him a certain youthful joy that seems almost lost today. We journalists can be envy to Robert him— for us, photographing children in the street is now strictly forbidden. No photographer today could capture such a living, breathing moment as Doisneau did — the kind that takes your breath away. And Paris, though still beautiful, has become so tourist-oriented that you won’t find a gang of boys near the Eiffel Tower anymore — only vendors of Chinese souvenirs adorned with French symbols. This leaves one with a faint feeling of La France perdue — a lost France, the vanishing gallic spirit beneath all of Paris’s splendour.
In 1937, at the age of 25, Robert moved with his young wife Pierrette to an artist’s studio in Montrouge, a suburb of Paris, where he lived for the rest of his life. Among his neighbours were artists such as Étienne Hajdu, André Fougeron, and Étienne Béothy. Even Fernand Léger had a studio in the next building. Nearby lived Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti and César. The studio became Doisneau’s true home — the ideal environment for him. The objects and unfinished canvases told the stories of artists more eloquently than any words could. Yet he never had the courage to knock on the doors of his celebraty neighbours: “I wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask for the time of those who used theirs so productively. Of those great masters whose names are the titles of chapters in art history books, whom we imagine forever walking in a halo of neon light… And yet, some of these great masters literally pushed me into their studios.”
His portrait of Pablo Picasso in a striped sailor’s shirt —the croissants rest on the table, perfectly echoing the shape of his talanted hands — is nothing short of genius. You surely know it. Just as you’ll recognise his portrayal of the writer Georges Simenon (born in Liège), the creator of Inspector Maigret — a likeness captured by Robert with unmistakable insight.
From 1949 to 1952, this decidedly unglamorous man worked for Vogue magazine. Michel de Brunhoff hired him to offer a fresh perspective on the renewal of post-war French society — on its social events, lavish balls, vibrant cultural life, and, more rarely, its fashionable world. Once again, his photographs were nothing short of brilliant. He possessed the key to a world that did not belong to him — a world in which he did not truly participate, yet whose beauty and refined grace he perceived with rare sensitivity. This allowed him to capture remarkable images: “At times, they may seem to show only the pretentiousness of a frivolous world, or, seen in a more generous light, they become illustrations of a society of exquisite refinement.”
In striking contrast — though not in talent, of which he had an abundance — stand his “industrial photographs.” At the Renault factories, where he worked on contract from 1934 to 1939, Robert Doisneau witnessed the rise of the Popular Front. Coming from the lower middle class and living in the suburbs, he felt the winds of change. It was there that his political conscience was born, convincing him of his solidarity with the working class, whose harsh daily lives and courageous struggles he tirelessly documented. He also accompanied society’s outcasts — those condemned by circumstance to hopeless destinies. From the miners of Lens to the prostitutes of Paris, from the abandoned inmates of the Nanterre prison-hospice in the 1950s to the steelworkers of the Fensch Valley in the 1970s — their mutilated hands set against industrial backdrops forming an indictment of capitalism more powerful than Marx’s Capital — Doisneau always sought to reveal the loneliness and dignity of those to whom life had been unkind, and who were left with no choice but to face a harsh old age in boredom, solitude or poverty.He gave these commissioned series — most often for left-wing publications such as Regards, Action and La Vie ouvrière — priority over all his other activities.
Photo Irina Snitko
