The kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville
Robert Doisneau , 1950

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville , also The kiss in front of the town hall ( French Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville ), is a black and white photograph by the French photographer Robert Doisneau from 1950. It shows a couple kissing on a busy sidewalk the Hôtel de Ville , the town hall of Paris. The photograph was published in the US magazine Life in the year it was taken,along with several other photos of kissing couples from Paris. Rediscovered in the 1980s, it has since been featured on a wide variety of products including posters, calendars, and stationery, and is considered one of the most widely reproduced photographs in the world.

description

The west facade of the Paris Hôtel de Ville, which can be seen in the background of the photo

The photo shows a Parisian street scene on Rue de Rivoli . In the foreground a man can be seen from behind, who is sitting at a table in a café. On the sidewalk in front of him you can see a young man and a young woman kissing each other. The man has put his right hand on the woman's shoulder. There are other people on the sidewalk, all of whom seem to be in motion. A man who is wearing a beret and glasses and is walking behind the couple and a woman who is at the same height as the couple are clearly recognizable . Behind the sidewalk you can see a street on which two cars drive from left to right. In the background, the west facade of the Paris Hôtel de Ville can be seen blurred on the left, and further houses can be seen on the right.

Creation and publication

According to the photographer Robert Doisneau, the photo was taken in March 1950 as a commission for the US magazine Life . For the kiss, Doisneau had hired the drama students Françoise Bornet and Jacques Carteaud, whom he had seen kissing near the Invalides . According to Bornet, the photo shoot, during which five to six poses were shot in different locations in Paris, lasted half a day.

The photo was published in the June 12, 1950 issue of Life in the regularly appearing Speaking of Pictures feature ... together with seven other photos by Doisneau, which also show kissing couples in Paris. The title of the photo series was In Paris young lovers kiss wherever they want to and nobody seems to care (German: “ In Paris, young lovers kiss wherever they want and nobody seems to mind ”). The photo The Kiss in front of the Hotel de Ville was subtitled "This was short kiss, 'a kiss rapide,' says photographer" (German: "This was a short kiss, 'a kiss rapide', says the photographer"). The short text of the feature reports that, unlike in other cities, young couples in Paris do not look for quiet places to kiss. Instead, they would do this all day and all night in busy places in the city. They would only be noticed by tourists, locals would ignore it or even grin in agreement. A police officer is quoted who welcomes this behavior. This would prevent the young men from playing hockey where they could injure themselves. The text gives the name of the photographer and describes the photos as not positioned.

analysis

The kiss in front of the Hôtel de Ville can be classified as French humanistic photography. It developed in post-war France from the need to develop a new idea of ​​“being French” after the period of occupation by the German Reich , which was perceived as traumatic, and the phase of “ puration ” that followed the liberation . The everyday life of the French was mostly depicted. According to Nina Lager Vestberg, Doisneau's Kiss takes up some central elements of humanistic photography that were directly related to the concerns and needs of French society at the time of its creation. The street represents freedom, the café sociability, Paris France itself, the ordinary people those who are responsible for the reconstruction of France, and the couple in love represent the families who are supposed to make up for the French birth deficit.

For Lager Vestberg, The Kiss, along with the Life article in which it appeared, is also a document that allows statements about the post-war USA. Although the reported life but magazine substantially over the United States, took reports of France regularly to one compared to the US less impressive when creating even more glamorous counterpart. The reports were mostly limited to relatively shallow topics such as love, fashion and art, current French politics played a subordinate role. Nevertheless, from the point of view of Camp Vestberg, these reports were politically colored. France mostly served as a symbol of two of America's greatest fears during this period: sexuality and communism . Even the short text that accompanied the kiss photos, emphasizes that no Parisian is bothered by the kissing couple, the common prejudice of the sexually unrestrained French in the USA. The police officer's quote also reveals a political subtext that accuses the French of being too weak to defend their country.

Gustave Caillebotte: Street in Paris on a Rainy Day , 1877

Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock sees references to 19th century art while kissing in front of the Hôtel de Ville . The photo, with its glimpse of strolling Parisians, is reminiscent of paintings by French impressionists . In particular, she sees similarities to the painting Street in Paris on a Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte , since both works put the focus on the “spectator as spectacle”. While at Caillebotte you can watch the walking couple watching the passers-by, with Doisneau's photo you can join the man in the foreground who is sitting at the café table and watching the kissing couple.

Aftermath

The photo was rediscovered in the mid-1980s and has since been featured on a wide variety of products including posters, calendars, postcards and stationery. In 2005 the director of the Rapho photo agency spoke of 500,000 printed posters and 400,000 printed postcards. The picture is thus one of the most reproduced photographs in the world and has developed into a universal icon for love and romance. The photo is said to be particularly popular with the female audience. According to Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock, it gives women the opportunity to escape everyday life in their imagination to a place that is characterized by passion and spontaneity.

The great commercial success of photography led to the photographer Doisneau being sued by several people. A couple named Lavergne had supposedly recognized each other in the photo and demanded 500,000 francs from Doisneau for violating their privacy . The lawsuit was dismissed in 1993 by the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris because Doisneau first admitted that he had taken the photo with actors, so it was posed; he was able to prove this with different recordings of the same couple. In parallel proceedings, Françoise Bornet, the kissing woman, demanded 100,000 francs and a share of the proceeds from the photography of Doisneau and the Rapho photo agency. While Doisneau did not deny that Bornet was the model in the photo, he said she had already been paid. The court also rejected Bornet's claim, because she was not recognizable in the photo due to her position and could therefore not claim any rights to the picture.

In 2005, Bornet auctioned a copy of the photo she received from Doisneau in 1950 as part of her payment. With an estimated price between 15,000 and 20,000 euros, a Swiss who remained anonymous offered 155,000 euros. As a result of the auction, an article appeared in the Irish Times in which an Irish family claimed that the man in the beret in the photo was their late father, Jack Costello, a Dublin auctioneer. At that time he was on a pilgrimage to Rome and was admitted by chance. The family emphasized that, unlike Bornet and the Lavergnes, they did not want to associate any financial claims with this claim.

Inspired by the lawsuit of the Lavergne couple, the French writer Philippe Delerm published the novel Les Amoureux de l'hôtel de ville in 1993 about a man who grew up believing that his parents were the couple in the photo. The photo also plays a role in the US feature film Singles - Lonely Together from 1992, where it serves as a talisman for a protagonist and convinces him to be intuitive, brave, loyal and romantic. It is also used for illustration in the media, for example in 1997 by the US women's magazine Mirabella for an article on infidelity. The place of shooting became a tourist attraction. The book The Best Places to Kiss in Paris from 2002 describes how the photo can be recreated in the original location.

literature

  • Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock: A Stolen Kiss: Robert Doisneau's Photographic Icon . In: Visual Resources . tape 13 , no. 2 , 1997, p. 189–197 , doi : 10.1080 / 01973762.1997.9659008 (English).
  • Hans-Michael Koetzle: Photo Icons. 50 key frames and their backgrounds . Taschen, Cologne 2019, ISBN 978-3-8365-7771-7 , pp. 256-263 .
  • Nina Lager Vestberg: Photography as cultural memory: imag (in) ing France in the 1950s . In: Journal of Romance Studies . tape 5 , no. 2 , 2005, p. 75–90 , doi : 10.3828 / jrs.5.2.75 (English).
  • Nina Lager Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a Universal Cliché . In: History of Photography . tape 35 , no. 2 , 2011, p. 157–165 , doi : 10.1080 / 03087298.2011.521329 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Nina camp Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a universal cliché. 2011, p. 163.
  2. ^ Hans-Michael Koetzle: Photo Icons. 2019, p. 257.
  3. ↑ a b Sabine Glaubitz: Legendary "kiss" photo auctioned for 155,000 euros . In: The time . No. 17 , 2005 ( zeit.de ).
  4. ↑ Speaking of Pictures… In Paris young lovers kiss wherever they want to and nobody seems to care . In: Life . Volume 28, No. 24 , June 12, 1950, pp. 16-18 (English).
  5. ↑ a b Nina camp Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a universal cliché. 2011, p. 157.
  6. ↑ Nina camp Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a universal cliché. 2011, p. 159.
  7. ↑ Nina camp Vestberg: Robert Doisneau and the Making of a universal cliché. 2011, pp. 159-161.
  8. ↑ Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock: A Stolen Kiss: Robert Doisneau's Photographic icon. 1997, pp. 191-192.
  9. ↑ a b Nina camp Vestberg: Photography as cultural memory: imag (in) ing France in the 1950s . 2005, p. 78.
  10. ↑ Photo auction: 155,000 euros for a kiss. In: Spiegel Online . April 26, 2005, accessed November 18, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock: A Stolen Kiss: Robert Doisneau's Photographic icon. 1997, pp. 195-196.
  12. ↑ Michel Guerrin: Les affaires du Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville. Robert Doisneau gagne ses deux procès . In: Le Monde . June 5, 1993, p. 18 (French, lemonde.fr ). Nina Lager Vestberg: Photography as cultural memory: imag (in) ing France in the 1950s . 2005, p. 80.
  13. ^ Róisín Ingle: Passing fame for the man in the beret. In: The Irish Times. April 30, 2005, accessed November 16, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Nina camp Vestberg: Photography as cultural memory: imag (in) ing France in the 1950s . 2005, p. 81.
  15. ↑ Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock: A Stolen Kiss: Robert Doisneau's Photographic icon. 1997, p. 196.
  16. ↑ Anne Grevstad-Nordbrock: A Stolen Kiss: Robert Doisneau's Photographic icon. 1997, p. 197, footnote 26.