Last year we visited a photo exhibition in Grenoble which was centred around photographer Robert Doisneau. He was a French photographer that was born at the beginning of the 20th century. Basically around the same time my grandfather was born. Right before the first World War. So a long long time ago. Interestingly enough his pictures didn’t feel outdated to me, and therefore I bought almost all the postcards that were available after seeing the exhibition.

For what I can understand Robert Doisneau was one of the photographers that established photojournalism. His mostly worked on the streets of Paris, but at this exhibition we visited, they showed mostly mountain sceneries. He tried to capture the local tourist and mountain life. Although it felt very much like reality, you could also see very clearly that he had staged what we saw or at least you could see his hand in what he captured. It was really beautiful. He had a great feeling for telling a story with only one picture. His photography was both historical and artistic in a way that you weren’t always clear how much was real and how much was staged. I wish you could have all visited the exhibition and seen the hundreds of photo’s. You can see a few of the images from this exhibition here and you can find his whole portfolio here. My friend Astrid also sells some of his pictures here.

Apparently in his time he was also a well known postcard photographer. The postcard industry was booming at that time and people were always looking for interesting postcards to send out. We have send out this postcard today. The postcard was made in the sixties I think. It was difficult to let it go I must admit. Almost as difficult as letting your ski’s go in the night.