Un Regard Oblique

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Un Regard Oblique
Robert Doisneau , 1948

Link to the picture
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Un Regard Oblique , also Le Regard Oblique (Frenchfor "Ein Seitenblick" / "Ein schräger Blick" or "Der Seitenblick" / "Der Schräger Blick"), is ablack and white photograph bytheFrenchphotographerRobert Doisneaufrom 1948. It shows a man and womanlooking atpaintings in aParisianshop window.

The photograph was published in May 1949 in the US magazine Life , along with similar images . Based on an article on feminist film theory published in 1982 , it received some attention in academic discourse.

description

The photo was taken from a shop window and shows a man and a woman standing in front of the shop window. In the initial publication and in later analyzes of the photo, they are described as a married couple. The woman looks at a painting that is on display in the middle of the shop window. The content of the picture is not visible to the viewer of the photo, only the frame is reflected in the shop window. The woman's slightly open mouth suggests that she is currently commenting on the picture. The man is standing to her right as seen from the viewer. His gaze is not focused on the picture in the middle, but on a painting that is hanging on a wall on the left. It shows a woman from behind who is bare except for black knee socks and looks through a slightly opened door. In the background of the photo, three boys can be seen in front of a shop with the label “ Ceinturerie ” (German for “belt shop ”) or “ Teinturerie ” (German for “ cleaning ”).

Creation and publication

The photo was taken in 1948. The window belonged to the antique shop owned by Robert Miquel , known as Romi, who also worked as a reporter for Paris Match and Le Crapouillot and was a friend of Robert Doisneau. The shop was located at 15 rue de Seine in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The photo was published in the May 23, 1949 issue of Life in the regular feature Speaking of Pictures ... along with eight other photos by Doisneau. Seven of them show the same motif only with other people looking into the shop window. The eighth photo shows a crowd in front of the shop. The title of the photo series is Painting Produces acute reactions on Paris left bank (German "painting caused strong reactions in the Left Bank of Paris"). Un Regard Oblique is the last photo of the feature and is the only one with a caption besides the photo of the crowd. It is subtitled “Divided attention is given by a window-shopping couple. Wife earnestly discusses center painting, but her husband's eyes are already wandering ” . The text of the feature reports on the background of the photos. The owner of the antique shop put two paintings in his shop window. The one in the middle shows a naked woman getting into her bathroom. The painting on the wall is 50 years old and by an unknown artist named Wagner. However, the business owner soon noticed that the less conspicuously placed picture on the wall was attracting significantly more attention from passers-by. The photographer Robert Doisneau observed this and therefore set up his camera behind the shop window to capture the surprise and confusion of his compatriots when they see the picture.

A month before the Life article, photos of Doisneau with the same motif had already appeared in the French magazine Point de vue . The article was entitled Le photographe était derrière la vitrine. Histoire sans paroles (German "The photographer was behind the shop window. History without words"). Of the twelve photos shown, six later appeared in the Life article. The photo Un Regard Oblique was not included in Point de vue .

The Life article gives the impression that the photos were taken spontaneously and without the knowledge of those depicted. The art scholar James M. McArdle, however, questions this. The staging, especially the lighting, looked too well prepared for that. The people depicted in the photos are also chosen so cliché and their facial expressions so melodramatic that there is a lot to be said for cast actors. A clue of this is the creation of photos of another Doisneau feature that appeared in Life in June 1950 . It showed photographs of kissing couples, including the kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville , which later became very popular . Although this Life article explicitly described the photos as unsolicited, Doisneau had to admit in the early 1990s that he had taken them with paid actors.

reception

In 1982, Mary Ann Doane , a pioneer in feminist film theory, published an article on the female viewer in Screen magazine . In it she also dealt with Un Regard Oblique . For her, the photo embodies the result of her analysis, according to which the female gaze is negated in classic Hollywood cinema . So the woman in the photo only appears to be the protagonist. Actually, photography focuses on the male gaze. This is already clear from their title, which puts the emphasis on the man's gaze. This view from the right edge of the painting on the left also ensures that the woman's gaze is extinguished. Overall, Doane rates the photo as a “dirty joke at the expense of the female gaze”, which women cannot read and can only be enjoyed in masochism .

The view put forward by Doane and others, such as Griselda Pollock , that Un Regard Oblique is evidence of the marginalization of the female gaze, was also criticized. Several commentators point to other photographs in Doisneau's series, which show women on the wall looking at the painting and thus do not correspond to Doane's statements. In particular, the photograph is mentioned, which was shown large in the Life feature on the first page. A woman stands alone in front of the shop window and looks at the painting of the naked woman with shocked eyes and open mouth.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Winfried Pauleit: The Reconsidered reconsidered. Mary Ann Doane's feminist theoretical work between still images and movement images . In: after the film . No. 6 , September 14, 2009 ( afterfilm.de ).
  2. ^ Victoria Gao: Robert Doisneau's La Dame Indignée: Modernity in the Fourth Republic . In: Ezra's Archive . tape 1 , no. 1 , 2011, p. 21–32 , here: 24 (English, handle.net ).
  3. ↑ a b c James M. McArdle: April 1: Fooling. In: onthisdateinphotography.com. April 1, 2018, accessed March 8, 2021 .
  4. ↑ Speaking of Pictures… Painting produces acute reactions on Paris left bank . In: Life . Volume 26, No. 21 , May 23, 1949, pp. 20–22 (English, google.de ).
  5. ↑ Le photographe était derrière la vitrine. Histoire sans paroles . In: Point de vue . April 21, 1949, p. 12–13 (French, ssl-images-amazon.com ). Quoted in: Nina Lager Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a Universal Cliché . In: History of Photography . tape 35 , no. 2 , 2011, p. 157–165 , here: 162 , doi : 10.1080 / 03087298.2011.521329 (English).
  6. ↑ Mary Ann Doane: Film and Masquerade: On The Theory of the Female Audience . In: Women and Film . No. 38 , May 1985, pp. 4–19 , here: 14–17 , JSTOR : 24056040 (English: Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator . Translated by Eva-Maria Warth, Gabriele Kreutzner).
  7. ↑ Kristyn Gorton: Theorising Desire. From Freud to Feminism to Film . Palgrave Macmillan, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-230-58224-8 , pp. 77-78 , doi : 10.1057 / 9780230582248 (English).