Sarah Carrigan and Dr. James Swensen, Department of Visual Arts

I suppose it all started in a textbook. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, but as one who generally avoids superfluous bouts of academic reading, I’m still in a fair amount of awe that this project ever got dreamt up in the first place. Yet how could I resist the delightfully amiable photograph of an old man whose eyes were filled with light and mischief flirting with me from the introduction of my Art History 379 book? A man whom the author took so much care to mention with a tone of distinct fondness despite the fact that there was no place for him in the tome of the official canon of important photographic works outlined just beyond.

Truthfully, little is written on Robert Doisneau that stretches far past the realm of the charming coffee table book. His images, generally classified by a genre known as Street Photography, are full of the sort of nostalgia and romance that appeal to the sentimental hearts of a faceless and massive consumer base. His most famous work, Kiss at the Hotel de Ville, adorns everything from key chains to coffee mugs and can typically be found plastered on the wall of aspiring Francophiles everywhere. He does not push the envelope of photojournalism as far as portraying the harsh, gritty realities of a Parisian underbelly – one that my experience showed not only exists but also thrives – rather he famously admitted, “I don’t photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.”

My original intent with my project was to seek out the locations of a selection of Doisneau’s images and return to take a second photograph as a way to document a social and physical change in the Parisian landscape from when Doisneau was working to now.1 However, most of his images focus heavily on the human aspect of life in the city he loved. While this is what I came to appreciate about Doisneau, it proved to be the most challenging aspect of my project. How could one recreate the notorious Kiss without those same lovers, that same fire of a young romance?

This was undoubtedly the biggest challenge, first finding images that had the landscape as a dominant enough character as to lend itself to re-creation, or at least a worthy comparison from then to now. Then, of course, there was the tracking down of the locations originally shown in the photographs I selected. I had never been to Paris before this project and at first I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer size of the sprawling city. Even though I had nailed down exact addresses for some of the images, they meant nothing to me; I couldn’t tell Saint Germaine from Gentilly if I had to.

Eventually I decided to hire an English speaking taxi for a day to help facilitate a navigation heavy endeavor. Armed with a pocket-sized notebook filled with image titles and locations, my mother and I climbed into a shiny black Mercedes early on a morning in July and set off. That is when we met Ali. Our driver for the day had come to Paris from Iran during the 1979 revolution. Educated at the Sorbonne, he drove his taxi as means of consistent income in a nation that had little need for his advanced degree in archaeology. He believed in hard work and determination and in between helping us scour neighborhoods for just the right spot, he painted the most human picture of Paris I would experience. I mention him not only for his invaluable assistance in completing this project but because he came to personify the Paris Doisneau had first showed me. As we wound our way from the traffic of the Jardin de Tuleries out to the quite suburbs and back again, Ali would point left and right to this location and that providing us with a vivid history lesson of each spot; what it was, what it is, and how Paris’s constantly evolving social and political climate shaped the face of one of the world’s most beloved metropolises.

Throughout the day, there were moments of extraordinary frustration where I couldn’t get the location just right. Entire buildings had been demolished, or the wall where Doisneau must have stood to get the angle for the original was gone and I was left with what I felt was a lackluster replica of his original. Still, I managed to get a respectable number, nearly twenty locations in all, and I’m tremendously proud of that. Even more, I’m proud that I came to understand with at least a novice’s eye, the nuance of each arrondissement and suburb, the differences in the people and their lifestyles from one part of town to the next.

There were tremendous moments of clarity where I felt completely consumed in the Paris Doisneau loved so much. His photographs were not cold, easily categorized records of addresses and geography. He captured the spirit of the city as it struggled through the most tumultuous decades of a century rapt with change. He traversed the streets of Paris shooting scenes of real life with the intent of capturing the heart of the French people, both their sense of romance and their resilience. What has brought me the most satisfaction? Seeing first hand and understanding in a way I couldn’t have without Doisneau, that romance, that resilience. It was when I let myself focus on people rather than landmarks. In those moments I felt Paris, her truth, her complexity, her grace, and her life.

My time with Doisneau is far from finished. I have only begun to scratch the surface of a project I feel will bring about a renewed interest in the beloved photographer, hopefully as a more serious note in the canon of photography. Eventually, my work will serve as the basis as my capstone thesis prior to graduating with a degree in Art History and Curatorial Studies. My mentor and I have also discussed the probability of having the project published into a book once I’ve accumulated a dozen or more images. If possible, I would love to have the Office of Research and Creative Activities’ continued support in the future as I continue in my efforts to keep Robert Doisneu’s works alive.

References

All images selected for this project, along with any specific addresses used in locating them were found in the following text:
Peter Hamilton, Robert Doisneau: a Photographer’s Life (New York: Abbeville Press, 1995)