My suburban childhood sticks to my skin. Paris was on the other side of the city walls. I used to watch the yellow tram going by, the number 93 from Arcueil to Chatelet, with my nose pressed to the window pane. Robert Doisneau, born Gentilly , died Montrouge, When Robert was four his father was killed in the First World War. In his teens he was sent off daily for four years to study and practice engraving at the Estienne College in Paris.
Wanting to be a photographer, he detested it. Although the engraving skills did become useful when, as part of the Underground Resistance, he forged documents during the war. He was there for five years. He and Pierrette, his wife, married in and moved into a flat at 46 Place Jules Ferry, Montrouge in It remained the family home up until their deaths.
Robert died six months after his wife, who he had been caring for. Their two daughters were brought up at 46 Place Jules Ferry. The front of the flat looks out onto a small park. Since his death it has been renamed Square Robert Doisneau.
The immediate suburbs of Paris, historically were, and still are, different from the suburbs of London. The London Underground and the London suburban railways spawned a genteel suburbia.
Or shabby industrial areas with wasteland and workers flats that would not have been out of place in the former Eastern Block. But there was a darker commentary to his photographs, as well.
