Photographing Robert Doisneau

As the centrepiece of my Duplicity show I installed these two prints around the quote to accentuate the activist intention of that series, as compared to what’s called humanist documentary photography, of which Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) was one of the masters. It was more than just teasing when Francine, who runs the “Atelier Robert Doisneau" with her sister Annette, said with that twinkle in her eye which she got from her father, that I’m doing just what he did. It was her uncanny way of agreeing that if the duplicity I denounce continues unabated “the world [we] want to live in” will collapse. “Photographing Robert Doisneau” is also about photography itself, transmission, and the art of the portrait. Viewing this installation people are often intrigued by just how different looking into the camera is from looking elsewhere, even up.