Exhibitions

Born in Paris in 1912, Doisneau never detached himself completely from this city. It was his hunting ground, ready to be used, his chosen source of images and emotions. Paris was his world, photography his pretext, curiosity his driving force and lightness his style: nobody else could take such unforgettable photographs, capturing an imperceptible moment of balance, the fruit his rare mastery and its relentless cultivation.

From Craft to Art exhibits a selection of about one hundred original prints, famous images set alongside some previously unseen in public, chosen for the most part from his atelier and from important private collections in France. This extensive selection, further enriched with personal documents and testimonies lovingly collected by the photographer’s daughter, provides us with an updated critical rereading, showing us how the apparent spontaneous beauty of his images was, in actual fact, the fruit of considerable work. In practical terms, Doisneau followed through from professional craft to artwork with unexpected seriousness, capturing fragments on film of a world to which he wished to bear witness. Robert Doisneau is one of the most important representatives of humanistic photography. For many years he has been looked upon as the minstrel of picturesque Paris, with a charming eye and a unique sense of the unexpected visual anecdote. As a result he has been championed as a poet of the "pure" moment. Doisneau´s oeuvre is however much deeper and complex than that reputation suggests.

But aside from the streets of Paris, where he encountered and portrayed lovers and children, Doisneau also produced some remarkable and unexpected colour photographs. In 1960, the magazine Fortune engaged the French photographer to reveal the life of an exceptional city, born like a brilliantly coloured flower in the middle of the Californian desert: Palm Springs. Doisneau accepted the challenge and amid the desert sands, palms and cobalt blue sky, the noisy inhabitants´ flashy attire, cocktails and golf courses, he created his own personal American dream, not in black and white but in an explosion of colour.

These images from the album Palm Springs 1960, reveal a little-known side of this great photographer and even the most seasoned experts will be surprised and carried away by a festive and ironic universe.