DOISNEAU’S SCÈNES D’ENFANTS

DOISNEAU, Robert. Scènes d’Enfants. (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1957). Small quarto, original photographic stiff paper covers, original dust jacket. $950.

First edition of this sprightly photo-essay on children, with 48 rich full-page photogravures.

Perhaps best-known for his documentation of working-class Paris (La Banlieue de Paris) and his high-society and fashion photography for Paris Vogue, Robert Doisneau was “one of France’s most popular and prolific reportage photographers, known for his modest, playful, and ironic images in amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes” (Encyclopedia of Photography). His Scènes d’Enfants reflects his “humanistic documentary mode” (Parr & Badger, 189), featuring 48 inimitable photogravures of children in all their canniness, vulnerability, mischievousness, and unselfconscious joie de vivre. Marc Riboud once called his pictures “brief glances of visual tenderness” (Frizot, 623). Text in French and Japanese. See Icons of Photography, 106; Roth, 132.

Only light edge-wear. Near-fine.