Robert Doisneau's Kiss by the Hotel DeVille

This morning I'm going back into the darkroom to print out the 11x14 size No Hands Bridge.  I got it all set up last night.  I just need to pour the chemicals out into the trays and I'm ready to go.  I'm also going to tone the print in a brown/copper toning solution to give it an antique look.  It's due a week from Saturday so I need to get on it.  Just in case, I'm going to go ahead and print out the digital photo that I decided I wasn't going to enter into this centennial event. I want to be sure which one looks better!

That's pretty much what's on my agenda today.  Tomorrow I have invited a new friend up to my studio who is also an acrylic artist and she wants to learn how to cut mats.  So that will take up my day.  Tonite I'm headed down to the High Hand Gallery for our bi-monthly meeting.  I usually help with the re-hang of the new artworks that is happening right today, but my ribs are still really sore and I wouldn't be much help this month.

When I first started to 'develop' my skills in photography, I didn't know a lot of other famous photographers.  I knew Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell, but that was pretty much it.  In my early conversations with my NYC photographer friend, Dave Beckerman, we discussed Robert Doisneau's famous Kiss by The Hotel DeVille photo.  The public thought it was 'real', but in all honesty he would hire actors and stage these scenes.  He was born in France in 1912 and lived until he was 82 (1994).  He was trained as a lithographer and worked as an engraver; then was hired as a photographer for the automobile company Renault.  Following that stint with Renault (he was actually fired), he then worked for both French and American magazines and chronicled Parisian life in black and white.  Doisneau's famous Kiss photo should not be confused with the kiss photo in Times Square on V-J Day 1945, taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life Magazine!  Doisneau took a humorous photo of Pablo Picasso sitting at a kitchen table, with croissants that branched out with four finger-like extensions in front of him on the table making it look like his hands were really huge!  Very subtle indeed!  Here's Doisneau's Kiss...