French photographer Robert Doisneau is celebrated for his portrayal of Parisian street scenes and pioneering photojournalism. A new exhibition looks at his lesser-known career forging documents in Nazi-occupied Paris, his photographs of wartime France, and his series on the underground printers who played such a vital role in the French Resistance.
In 1940s Nazi-occupied Paris, a Polish refugee knocked urgently at the door of French photographer Robert Doisneau. Serge Dobkowski desperately needed fake papers and he’d heard that Doisneau was the man for the job. Usually it took Doisneau 48 hours to make a false identity card. But Dobkowski was being followed and there was no time to waste. So Doisneau quickly took and printed his photo and glued it to his own identity card. Dobkowski was now free to cross the demarcation line out of occupied France and spend the rest of the war as Robert Doisneau.
