We are in 1950, in Lyon. Photographer Robert Doisneau is on commission for Vogue, in tandem with journalist Edmonde Charles-Roux. The great bourgeois and the man of the working-class districts will cross the capital of the Gauls. Doisneau will capture the life of Old Lyon and the Croix-Rousse district, will hang out along the quays, and meet those who make the city: artists, craftsmen, industrialists and the local bourgeoisie.
Street scene in Croix-RousseRobert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
Place Bellecour, the largest pedestrian square in Europe and the fourth largest square in France, has always been a place of exchange and a meeting point for Lyonnais.Robert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
Hired by Michel de Brunhoff, editor-in-chief of French Vogue, Robert Doisneau will be the eye of the magazine from 1949 to 1952, a period little known to the photographer during which he will become a social reporter, documenting dinners and masked balls, and portraying the whole -Paris and its artistic scene. He will even try his hand at fashion photography. In this somewhat counter-productive exercise, he will take an amused and new look at this world of luxury, but with which he will always remain at a distance, in a class consciousness. He will end his contract with these words: “I had to go because I was going to sink into comfort and softness. ”
Passers-by on a footbridge… and on the quays of Sâone.Robert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
Portrait of Professor Edmond Locard, founder of forensics and the originator of the first forensic laboratory.Robert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
Always for “Vogue”, he will also take his Rolleiflex for a walk in Bordeaux, Lille and Marseille in order to draw up a post-war inventory of these large changing cities. Through these urban wanderings, we find the DNA of work, all in tenderness and poetry, of Robert Doisneau, curious witness and observer of everyday life, who quite simply liked to say: “In the street, I feel good. ”
A communicant descending from the Basilica of Fourvière, “the hill that prays”.Robert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
The roofs of post-war Lyon.Robert DOISNEAU/GAMMA RAPHO
The exhibition “Robert Doisneau, Portraits of artists and views of Lyon” presents his portraits of artists of the twentieth century as well as his report from Lyon in parallel with paintings by the local painter, Jean Couty. Until July 25, 2021 at the Jean Couty museum, in Lyon.
Robert Doisneau, the Vogue years, Flammarion
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