From stolen kisses to irreverent children: Parisian photographic glimpses of joy, dignity, and human spirit

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes," wrote French writer Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time ... We live in a chaotic world, indifferent to our presence, often unresponsive to our morals and our desire for an intrinsic meaning to our journey... And yet, it is precisely within this gratuitousness, within this absence of purpose, that something astonishing occurs: the world, which owes us nothing, reveals moments of resplendent beauty. A landscape, a flower, a smile, a starry night - there is no need for them to be beautiful, and yet they are. Beauty flourishes in such moments without obligation or reason, like a gift that the world gives us without expecting anything in return... Despite this, our adult gaze often takes what it sees for granted, including its beauty too: grown accustomed to everything, we lose the ability to truly see, and our vision, dulled by routine, extinguishes everything that is extra-ordinary within the ordinary, concealing it behind the veil of habit.

Yet beauty never ceases to offer itself: it is only our perception that has forgotten how to listen to it. In this sense, art becomes as a school of seeing, transforming vision from a mechanical, passive act into a conscious and mindful form of presence. Through aesthetic contemplation, more easily awakened by a work of art, but extendable to the world around us (after all, isn't it itself a work of art?), our gaze takes the time to explore every shape, every colour, every movement, allowing us to see with greater depth and sensitivity. Thanks to the Impressionists, we can now inhabit the light; through English landscape painters, we can rediscover the skies, the weight of clouds, their grandeur and grace... And how can we ever look at cypress trees the same way, after Van Gogh turned them into hands in prayer reaching towards the sky, or flames blazing in search of infinity? This is what renders art sacred: a true mysterium fascinans that dazzles, amazes, and leaves us speechless...

One photographer made it his mission to help us rediscover the beauty of the world surrounding us – beauty so often hidden beneath the weight of habit and daily routine. This photographer was Robert Doisneau: “Photography grabs the man with the fixed gaze by the sleeve and shows him the free and permanent spectacle of the street,” he once said.

Figure 1 Autoportrait au Rolleiflex © Atelier Robert Doisneau

His aim was to return enchantment to our way of seeing, to restore wonder to the everyday, thus re-transforming the ordinary into the extra-ordinary. It is precisely this vision that inspires the exhibition Robert Doisneau. Instants Donnés, a photographic journey featuring more than 350 works, curated by Francine Deroudille, Annette Doisneau, Isabelle Benoit, and Benoît Remiche.

The curators open the exhibition with this very reflection:

“To observe life with the patience of a fisherman. To always leave the door open to the unexpected. To stop when told to move on, even when there’s nothing to see. To look at the powerful and the downtrodden with equal interest. Not to turn the lens away from misfortune, deprivation, or the worst, but to maintain a compassionate, supportive gaze, knowing how to read the courage, dignity, and sometimes grace in every person. To accumulate moments of encounter, of sharing, to provoke a smile, a laugh, sometimes, which consoles everything. It is with these thoughts in mind - leading the way for one of the most famous photographers of the last century, often oversimplified - that we have created this exhibition” - Deroudille, Doisneau, Benoit, Remiche

Figure 2 View of the exhibition © Tempora

The exhibition opens with Doisneau's photographs dedicated to the theme of childhood. After all, aren’t children the greatest artists - capable of seeing the uniqueness in every small thing, of transforming everyday life into a source of extraordinary discovery, of being endlessly astonished by truth, curiosity and wonder? “The days seem short to a child who frolics in the street full of possible discoveries and, sometimes, of mysteries that are a little frightening,” Doisneau once observed. Marked by a difficult childhood in a country ravaged by war, with his father away at the front, Doisneau maintained throughout his life a deep connection with children. He shared with them a profound love of play, an irrepressible need for freedom and a joyful irreverence: ‘Disobeying seems to me to be a vital function, and I must say that I have not deprived myself of it!’.

Figure 3 Les frères, rue du Docteur Mecène, Paris, 1934 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Figure 4 Véhicule militaire, 14 juillet 1969 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Figure 5 View of the exhibition © Tempora

This photographic journey continues with all the places that, due to their evocative power, were able to spark the imagination of Doisneau. Chief among them were artists’ ateliers: places where canvases and objects, imbued with humanity, could reveal the artist’s world more eloquently than words ever could... Having studied at the École Estienne and later owning a studio in Montrouge, Doisneau was intimately familiar with this universe: that’s how his lens focused on the studios of great masters, such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Nicolas de Staël, Le Corbusier, Maurice Utrillo, Hans Arp, Niki de Saint Phalle, Alberto Giacometti …

“I never would have had the audacity to ask for time from those who have used it so well. From the great masters whose names are chapter headings in art history books, and whom one imagines only move with a neon halo around them… Yet, some of these great masters gently pushed me by the shoulders into their studios.” - Robert Doisneau

Figure 6 View of the exhibition © Tempora

Doisneau once mockingly remarked: ‘I bought my flat and raised my children thanks to lubrication manuals and biscuits’. He was particularly active in fact in advertising and fashion photography, even collaborating with Vogue. Though this glittering world did not fully align with his sensibility, it gave him access to a segment of French society blossoming in the postwar years: ‘Sometimes they seem to show only the gesticulations of a futile world” he observed “or, viewed in a better light, they become illustrations of a society of exquisite refinement’.

Figure 7 Baiser valsé, 2 juin 1950 © Atelier Robert Doisneau

Yet Doisneau’s heart – and his lens – were most drawn to writers and their natural habitat: the Parisian bistros.

igure 8 Les Coiffeuses au soleil © Atelier Robert Doisneau

On the pavements of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, amid the gentle glow of a good Beaujolais – he encountered figures like Maximilien Vox, Jacques Prévert, Curzio Malaparte, Marguerite Duras, Raymond Queneau, Simone de Beauvoir... Doisneau, like the intellectuals he moved among, was driven by a common urge: to narrate the world, not with ink, but with light imprinted on film, each photograph a visual page offered up to eternity... “I want to tell stories,” he once said. “The people who have the most influence on me are writers and poets.”

Figure 9 View of the exhibition © Tempora

In the end, Doisneau’s gaze turned most insistently toward the humble and the vulnerable: having grown up in the suburbs, Doisneau remained deeply attuned to the struggles of those to whom life didn’t offer gifts or privileges - those who met each day with quiet resilience, because they had no other choice. His photographs become precious visual records of the isolation, tenacity and dignity of so many silent protagonists of French history: from the miners of the steel district in Lens to the marginalized patients of the prison-hospice in Nanterre, from the capital’s prostitutes to the steelworkers of the Fensch Valley in the 1970s... Guided by values of solidarity and brotherhood, Doisneau approached these lives with empathy and lucidity - never romanticizing, never judging. Through his lens, he returned humanity and dignity to those whose stories are so often left untold...

Figure 10 L'usine Bobin à Montrouge, 1945

With the same delicacy, on the initiative of the French administration, he photographed the Parisian suburbs in the 1980s - the very banlieues where his own personal and professional path had begun: “Faut que j'aille voir avant que tout ça ne disparaisse,” he said. “I have to go and see before it all disappears”...

Figure 11 View of the exhibition © Tempora

Finally, with the same sensitivity that defined his entire oeuvre, Doisneau captured what would become his most iconic photograph: Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss). A fleeting moment of undeniable happiness, the image centres on two young lovers, their embrace sharp and luminous, while everything around them dissolves in a soft and elusive blur ... Doisneau asked two actors, Jacques Carteaud and Françoise Bornet – lovers in real life - to kiss before his lens, not for spectacle, but to evoke the luminous truth of a genuine feeling .As Life magazine, which published the photo, famously wrote: “In Paris, young lovers kiss wherever they want to, and nobody seems to care.”

Figure 12 View of the exhibition © Tempora

Figure 13 View of the exhibition © Tempora

With as much affection as these two lovers, Doisneau observed the world around him - attentively, patiently - capturing its truth in its countless expressions: in its misery and nobility, in its fragility and strength, but, above all, in its most seemingly banal and everyday aspects, those that at a glance would seem unworthy of photographic representation or attention. And yet, would we be able, in the rush of our daily commute, on in the idleness of our afternoon strolls, to recognise the beauty hidden behind the veil of habit? Could we learn to look at the world as if we were the lens of Doisneau’s camera: attuned to beauty, alive to wonder, and open to the poetry of the everyday?