France • 1912-1994
Let's Go See the Sea

While he is best known for his Parisian street scenes of schoolchildren in shorts or a couple kissing in front of the Paris City Hall, Robert Doisneau actually did not focus solely on the French capital. He also cast his curious and poetic eye along the French coast, from Brittany to the “Côte d’Azur”, via Normandy, Vendée, the Basque country and Languedoc. He travelled on photo reportage assignments, on advertising commissions and during family holidays.

A self-proclaimed “rebel of the remarkable”, Robert Doisneau set about capturing the coastal world. Fishermen, dockers, tourists and Sunday sailors: all became protagonists in the human comedy at the heart of Doisneau’s work. Whether on Parisian cobblestones or Breton jetties, what interested Robert Doisneau the most was people, and his inspiration always contained a spark of joy. The rest is just the setting for his work.

His first seaside images, taken as early as the 1930s, have just as much of that “Doisnesque” quality as his better known photographs. A set of photographs capture the tiny silhouette of his wife Pierrette on a sandy beach, before turning to more social scenes such as sardine fishermen returning to port, children collecting shells, or onlookers on a promenade– all of which retain that signature sense of “humanist photography”. His daughters Annette Doisneau and Francine Deroudille have brought this little-known aspect of his work back to the fore.

These photographs allow us to take another look at Robert Doisneau, and learn to understand him better. They are also –above all else– a reminder that, beyond the pictures that made him famous, he was first and foremost a keen and invaluable witness to a bygone era with a transcendentally gentle, carefree ethos. As such, he is and will always remain one of the few essential names of 20th century French photography, both in the city and by the seaside.

JARDIN DES MARAIS

Robert Doisneau