Doisneau and Valentine's Day

How appropriate I suppose that just two days before Valentine's Day we finally get over to the Hotel de Ville (Paris city hall) to see the Doisneau exhibition. (photo right: sign for the exhibition next to one of the entrances of the Hotel de Ville.)

Robert Doisneau (1912-1994), considered one of the world's great street photographers, is probably best known for his photo of the "The Kiss by the Hotel de Ville" (le baiser de l'hotel de ville), which was taken in front of the Hotel de Ville in 195o!

Doisneau, who grew up and spent most of his life in the neighborhoods, spent a lifetime photographing men, women and children just going about their lives, with humor, pathos and a genuine sympathetic eye for the people of Paris. As we wended our way through the exhibtion looking at those fabulous photos, some of which I had already come across delightful little book I picked up at Brentano's a few months back, I couldn't help but feel that Doisneau didn't take photographs so much as he borrowed them. (photo below: waiting in line outside the Hotel de Ville.)


Doisneau never attained the worldwide fame as Henri Cartier-Bresson, but in that one photo, "The Kiss," he seemed to define what the world came to think of as "France" and particularly Paris in the postwar period: the capital of love as framed by art and the imagination. Which is I suppose still true to this day and probably goes a long way to account for why France remains the number one travel destination in the world.

And the photo? It was sold at auction in 2005 for €155,000 ($210,000) by Francoise Bornet, the woman in the photo (she and her boyfriend were paid to stage the kiss by Doisneau).

Speaking of St. Valentine's Day, it has become quite popular in Paris, naturally, since the focus of both the city and the holiday is on love and the various means to express that particular emotion. Susie had to work 12 hours and when I dropepd by to see her earlier in the afternoon she showed me the valentine cakes the shop chocolatier had made and so I had to snap a couple of photos:




That evening we had a quiet celebration at home: pan-seared steaks "dry" in a sauce of roasted fennel, carrots, onions reduced in a vegetable broth and then pureed by hand, topped with fried shallots, all served with blue-cheese cauliflower mashies (I love it when this stuff runs together) and a 2004 Cote Blonde. For dessert was a scrumptious chocolate layered cake Susie brought from work (actually leftovers from their lunch!).

Wish you were here,

Steve