(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 Andr? 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; see Trois secondes d'?ternit?, pl. 61) 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.

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