Robert Doisneau was one of France's best known photographers, most famous for his photograph The Kiss, a photo of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris. His photographs, taken over the course of several decades, provide a great record of French life.
Born on 14 April 1912 in Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, Paris, Doisneau lost his parents by the time he was seven. At thirteen he enrolled at Graduate School of Arts and Printing Industry, Paris, graduating at age seventeen with diplomas in engraving and lithography. It was at the institute that he was exposed to photography and other arts.
He got his first break in 1931, when he landed a job as an assistant with the modernist photographer Andre Vigneau. In 1932 he sold his first photo story to Excelsior magazine. In 1934, Doisneau started working with auto-manufacturer Renault as an industrial advertising photographer. Doisneau was to later describe his stint with Renault as "the beginning of (my) career as a photographer and the end of (my) youth".
Like everyone else growing up at that time, the World War II was to interrupt Doisneau's budding career. He was drafted in the French army as a soldier-cum-photographer in 1940, and served the French army until the end of the war in 1945. He allegedly used his artistic skills to forge passports and identification papers for the French Resistance.
The period after the war is associated with Doisneau's best, and certainly his most well known, work, including the iconic The Kiss, which became an internationally recognised symbol of young love in Paris.
Doisneau drifted into wilderness in the 1960s but later emerged to produce children's books and also involved himself with advertising and celebrity portraits.
Doisneau died on 1 April 1994, aged 81, in Montrouge, Paris, after a prolonged illness.