If the title of the article “Paris Suburbs” rings a bell with you…
A dreamlike photography exhibition is currently being held at the Fujifilm Square in Roppongi, where around 30 works from the early photography collection “Paris Suburbs” by Robert Doisneau, whom I love, are being exhibited in their original prints. Fujifilm has shown its generosity by making this valuable event free of charge!
For some reason, I didn’t notice it until recently and missed it. What a blunder, I’m so embarrassed.
I’ll have to go and see it at all costs. Or rather, there weren’t any difficulties at all, so I went there quickly on a certain day in late September when the heat was still lingering.
The sign for the Do-No Photo Exhibition is shining in the reflection. Let’s also include a pamphlet so that it can be seen clearly. 
Doisneau, who is famous for his photograph of “Kiss in front of the Paris City Hall”, is regarded as one of the leading French photographers of the 20th century, along with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, but the first half of his career was not a particularly glamorous one.
He was born and raised in the impoverished southern suburbs of Paris, and after working as a stone-board craftsman, he turned to photography as a way of making a living, taking advertising and industrial photographs, but his life as a professional photographer was not financially or emotionally fulfilling. It was not until he was 37 that the photographs he had taken as a sideline and stored away as his life’s work of the suburbs of Paris were published in a photo collection under the patronage of the poet Blaise Cendrars, and he was finally able to lay the foundations for his career as a photographer.
The subject of this exhibition is his early photo collection “Paris Suburbs”. He carefully took photographs with his Rolleiflex camera of the rundown and impoverished scenery of the suburbs of his hometown, and of the people who lived there in a modest but strong way. Although the photographs are objective and unemotional, with a slight distance between the photographer and the subject (which he attributes to his personality), they are not cold, detached third-person observations, but rather humorous and sympathetic.
They may not be showy, but they have a strange strength that draws you in as you look at them.
Another thing that surprised me at this photo exhibition.
This is a different book to the one linked above, but I already have a copy of “Paris Suburbs” (1992, Tosho Insatsu-sha) that I bought second-hand, and I already know most of the works on display. However, there is a huge difference in ”resolution” between looking at something in a book and seeing the original prints of the works on photographic paper at close range at a photography exhibition, to use the current buzzword. The scenery of the Paris suburbs from 100 years ago came vividly into view before my eyes, and I was deeply moved. The printed photos are so cool!
Oh, that’s why Fujifilm is supporting this! I see!
This photo exhibition will run through October, and from November they will be exhibiting Doisneau’s work from a different angle, so of course I’ll have to go and see that too.
