Doisneau Robert
(b Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, 14 April 1912; d Paris, 1 April
1994).
French photographer. He attended the Ecole Estienne in Paris (1926–9), where
he studied engraving, and after leaving the school he had various jobs
designing engraved labels and other items. He found his training of little
use, however, and soon began to experiment with photography, teaching
himself the techniques. In 1931 he worked as an assistant to the
photographer André Vigneau. The following year Doisneau’s series of
photographs of a flea market in Paris was published in the periodical
Excelsior. His early photographs have many of the features of his mature
works: for example the seeming unawareness of the camera shown by the people
in Sunday Painter (1932; ) and the comic subject both add to the
photograph’s charm, a quality Doisneau valued greatly. In 1934 he obtained a
job as an industrial photographer at the Renault factory in Billancourt,
Paris, where he was required to take photographs of the factory interior and
its machines as well as advertising shots of the finished cars. In the
summer of 1939 he was dismissed for being repeatedly late and then worked
briefly for the Rapho photographic agency in Paris, producing more
photographs of the capital.