The humanism of Robert Doisneau
On display and in a splendid book are the shots of one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century
«I get along well with ordinary people. Let's talk. We start talking about the weather and little by little we get to the important things. When I photograph them it's not as if I were there examining them with a magnifying glass, like a cold and scientific observer. It's a very fraternal thing, and it's wonderful to shed light on those people who are never in the spotlight."
With these words the great French photographer Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) described his art, his innate sensitivity which allowed him to capture with a fleeting black and white shot the difficulties of everyday life , the dignified poverty of many people, but also the fun of children and the joy of newlyweds.
His photographs - on display at the Diocesan Museum of Milan until 15 October, but also available in the Robert Doisneau volume (Silvana Editore, 2023, pp. 176, 130 images) - are each more evocative than the other. They help us get into a real time machine. Thus we find Paris and its suburbs between the 1930s and 1950s. We find the concierges of Parisian houses with their living rooms full of trinkets on the furniture, the bistros where the workers spent the few hours free from work. There are the faces of the shopkeepers and the shop signs, as well as the images of the Liberation of Paris by the partisans in 1944. The small stories of small people, so adored by Doisneau, then mix with the great history and images of the world of fashion taken for Vogue magazine, photos full of knowing malice due to the photographer's desire to capture the excesses of a world that took itself - and takes itself - too seriously.
Scrolling through the images one realizes that Doisneau with curiosity, love and humility reinterprets the everyday life he portrays, mixing shots captured live with skilful staging. It creates a sort of "theatre of the world" in which the protagonists move with lightness, disenchantment, perfectly at ease in front of the lens that scrutinizes them with human participation and an uncommon sense of belonging. Truly Doisneau was a great humanist, not only because he placed all human beings, from the small to the great, from the rich to the miserable, at the center of his work. He was a humanist because each of his photographs is the expression of an interested gaze, full of empathy for others.
A human look in the midst of so much humanity.
