Robert Doisneau: Photographer behind one of the world’s most romantic images honoured in Paris

[Music] Hello and thanks for joining us for Arts 24. And we’re starting with a French photographer that took one of history’s most romantic images here in Paris. Lez de la Deville was among hundreds of photographs Robert Dwano took around the French capital. Now the city’s Mile Museum has opened a retrospective on his career featuring more than 400 prints taken from the 1930s to the 1980s. Brian Quinn brings them into focus. Roberto Duano, his kiss at the Hotel Deville, the iconic photo that made his name, his celebrity portraits of the likes of Bri Bardau and Pablo Picasso, his street photography of Paris’s young street urchins, all just a small sampling of an immense body of work, much of it yet to be seen by the public. The photographers’s two daughters have set out to change that. Francine and Dette have overseen their father’s legacy for some 30 years. In these folios are stored thousands of prints, some rarely seen. Here’s a shot from the first time women were allowed to vote in France on April 29th, 1945. He really was the eyewitness of a century. Paris’s young lovers were far from Dwano’s main subject. He was dedicated to documenting the human condition with photo essays like this one from a coal mine in the 1940s. These photos were very important for him. We decided to put an emphasis on this social element of his work which he was really passionate about. Social conflict, the harsh working conditions of manual laborers. A bit of rest in the sunshine for some Paris hairdressers and the poverty of the streets in wide angle and closeup. All captured from a perspective of compassion. That’s a signature of his social photos. to always show his subjects dignity. Over a 62-year career, Dwano took 450,000 pictures, all carefully archived. Within this walk-in safe lies a treasure trove. This is the cold room. The negatives are kept here. Some have never been published. Each new exhibition a new opportunity to dig out new discoveries. Even for a popular theme that’s been well explored, we still find interesting new images. This proof sheet has a photo that has never been printed or published and is going to be the poster. the poster of an exhibition for which the two daughters have overseen each step up to its installation, careful to preserve the image of a humanistic photographer who captured his age with a poetic and humorous eye. Well, next then, after having wowed fans in New York, London, and Shanghai, the Art of the Brick exhibition is now in the French city of Bordeaux. More than 90 works of art are on show made exclusively from Lego by the American artist Nathan Sa. The exhibition is split into different universes from works representing the human body to avantgard sculptures. Jennifer Benraim pieces it all together for us. For Mona Lisa, Van Go star night munches for scream and sculptures like the Venus demo and the winged victory of Samothrace. All reconstructed using millions of tiny colored bricks. After a world tour, the Art of the Brick exhibition is breaking ground at the Memarin Museum in Bard. They are handled with extreme care, especially during transportation to prevent them from breaking. These works aren’t assembled piece by piece, but rather glued together section by section to improve their sturdiness. 90 artworks, both reproductions and original creations are on display, including a 6 m long T-Rex. All made by American artist Nathan SA, the first person to ever transform these bricks into art, earning himself a nickname of a Leonardo da Vinci of Lego. You need to have a patience of a saint to put together from these tiny pieces, these little bricks, all these works we see around us. Over the past 15 years, this traveling exhibition has attracted more than 10 million visitors. This museum hopes this is a first building block towards attracting more tourists this summer. Next then, his sharp wit and inventive storytelling have captivated readers for years as the chief film critic at the Guardian newspaper since 1999. He’s often a guest contributor on France 24 at the Canilm Festival, which starts later this month. Peter Bradshaw joins us now from London to discuss his latest work, The Body in the Mobile Library, and other stories. Hello, Peter. It’s fantastic to have you back now. Congratulations on these stories. They are inventive. They’re playful. They’re at times totally bewildering um like Career Move in which Satan makes a violent pact with a playright um or appropriation about a politician’s daughter in Bena um who needs to launder money. um before you actually published three novels. Um tell us though what drew you to the short stories as a form. Well, I was drawn to it. I started more or less over the lockdown sort of five or so years ago. I was fascinated by it as a as a as a mode of writing that I hadn’t really tried yet. Uh it’s it’s it’s very very challenging. It’s it’s I think it’s more challenging than than a novel in a way because you need a great compression and focus of of an approach as a writer and I love the fact that you can deliver a kind of idea in a short space of time to the reader. I was reading a lot of short stories at the time. I was reading a weird mix. I was reading Toltoy short stories. I was also reading the stories uh the short stories of the New Yorker writer Simon Rich a wonderfully talented uh young writer. And I thought, “Wow, uh, this is such a wonderful, wonderful genre. I’d love to try it myself. I’d love to get involved with this.” I was also writing for the BBC, BBC radio, who are a great commissioner of short stories. And so I I started writing and they were published in Esquire and the BBC. Uh, and it became a real thrill for me to write short stories. Now, these stories um, they often defy expectations. Is there a particular moment or story in this collection that you found especially fun to write? I found it I’m not sure it’s fun exactly. I found it a real release to write about uh something to do with the lockdown because I was writing about I was writing during the lockdown a lot of the time. I I written a short story called intimate about an intimacy coordinator on a film and television set who finds that her finds that her work is interrupted by the lockdown that she finds the ultimate irony is that she she manages and shepherds intimacy and yet the lockdown forbids intimacy. Uh and I found that the most interesting in a way the most liberating story to write. And that is one of your 21 stories in the book and you’re actually going to develop it into a movie script. Can you tell us more about that? Yes. Well, a an old friend of mine, uh, David Bedil, with whom I’m also writing a television program, uh, read my stories and he said he was particularly excited by Intimate and he said, “Let’s let’s think about that. Let’s think about that as a as a movie idea.” Uh, and so we’re working on that right now. And who knows, it might it might come to pass. Um, is there a particular story out of the 21 that’s comes from your own life? I wouldn’t like to I wouldn’t like to say because they’re all so bizarre. I mean, my wife is so bewildered and she said to me, “Look, if any of these turns out to be based on you, I’m leaving you.” So, I’m reluctant to say the very least of it to say that any of these are based on me to in a in a way they all are and they none of them are. There are kind of well I I always like to say a writer is Dr. Jackekal and his work is Mr. Hyde. Um, and so when I’m talking to you right now, I’m Dr. Jackekal, but all of these stories are 21 little Mr. Heights who’ve come out of my head. Okay. It’s a very interesting insight into your head, Peter Bradshaw. Um, we’re looking ahead now to the Can Film Festival, which begins later this month. You’re a regular fixture there. Um, given all the exciting films that are on offer, what are you most looking forward to this year? Oh, I can hardly break it down. I mean, you and I have been at CAN for so long. Uh, we know how exciting it is. I’m really looking forward to a film called Enzo by Roan Compio uh who is a wonderful wonderful uh French filmmaker and screenwriter. Uh he is a terrific terrific uh terrific director. He’s it’s it’s apparently I mean I know very little about it. It’s about a 16-year-old who meets a Ukrainian who shakes up his world. It’s a script that he developed with the late Kante. Uh and I’m really looking forward to that. Um, I’m also looking forward to Hilur Palmason’s film, The Love That Remains. Uh, this is a really fascinating Icelandic director who whose movie Godland I thought was was brilliant. Uh, and again, the great thing about K is that you genuinely don’t know much about these films before before you see them because they’re all premiieres. So, there’s always that kind of Christmas morning sense of anticipation and thrill and excitement because you really don’t know much about it. as I understand it, this is about a year in the life of a troubled family. What a fascinating director he is. And so I’m really looking forward to that one. Okay. And then of course the Britain’s Lin Ramsey, of course. Oh yeah, that was a late edition. Yeah, that does sound exciting. Late edition. Yeah. I’m looking forward to seeing you at the festival. Your short story collection, The Body in the Mobile Library and other stories is available now. Just before we go though, Peter, are you a fan of musicals on stage? And if so, did you catch the onstage adaptation of Titanic that was in London earlier this year? I haven’t seen it yet. I I am a fan of musicals on stage stage. I’m a fan of musicals as a genre all round. Uh Titanique, I know it’s been in in London where it’s it’s at the as I understand it’s in the criterion in in Piccadilly Circus in London. I I think I would find that not a guilty pleasure but an innocent pleasure. Okay. Well, this camp musical spoof of the James Cameron film is on stage in Paris now at the Leo. Titanique is playing until June. We’re going to leave you with images from that. Thanks for watching. There’s more news coming up on France 24 after [Music] [Applause] this in my heart. And my heart will go and [Music]

In this edition of arts24, we explore a major retrospective in Paris dedicated to legendary French photographer Robert Doisneau, best known for his iconic image “Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville” (“The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville”). The exhibition celebrates his poetic vision and timeless moments captured on film.
#RobertDoisneau #Exhibition #photography

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