humanist photography – ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

The Photography of Voula Papaïoannou

Born at the historic city of Lamia in 1898, Voula Papaïoannou was a Greek photographer known for her documentation of the landscape and inhabitants of Greece. Her oeuvre is part of the School of Humanist Photography that emerged in the middle of the twentieth-century after the two World Wars. Instead of momentous events, humanist photography focused on everyday human experience, its nature, mannerisms and customs.

Voula Papaïoannou studied at the Polytechnic University of Athens where she developed an interest in photography. She began her career in the 1930s with several exhibitions of refined, nostalgic images of Greece’s landscape, its architectural monuments, and ancient works of art. However, Papaïoannou’s relationship with the photographic medium shifted drastically at the onset of the Second World War. Deeply affected by the suffering endured by the civilian population of Athens, she began to use her camera to arouse the conscience of the people.

Papaïoannou began to document the conflict’s background, her nation’s preparation for the war effort, and the departure of Greek soldiers to the front lines. She continued her work by documenting the period of German and Italian occupation and the ensuing economic blockade. Papaïoannou also created an emotional photographic series that revealed the emaciated children who were suffering from the great famine of 1941 to 1942.

Greece suffered comparatively much more than most Western European countries during the Second World War due to a number of factors. Heavy resistance led to immense German reprisals against civilians. Greece was also dependent on food imports; the British naval blockade coupled with transfers of agricultural produce to Germany led to a great famine. It is estimated that the Greek population declined by seven per cent during the Second World War. The country’s population also was affected by the rising hyperinflation, the fifth worst in economic history.

After the liberation of Greece, Voula Papaïoannou became a member of the photographic unit under the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation, a body dedicated to assist and repatriate refugees. She toured the Greek countryside documenting the hardships of its rural population devastated by the 1944-1949 Civil War. The most well-known of all Papaïoannou’s work are her photographs which showed families and particularly children living under inhumane conditions. These photographs did not dwell on the sufferings of its subjects but rather told individual stories that focused on their dignity.

Papaïoannou’s work throughout the 1950s expressed Greece’s prevailing optimism, despite its two decades of suffering and thousand of deaths, in both the restoration of its traditional values and the future of mankind. Her photographs of the historic Greek landscape, shot during this period, were barren and drenched in light. Papaïoannou’s images of the Greek inhabitants, however, still showed a proud and independent people despite their poverty.

In addition to work published in the press, two collections of Voula Papaïoannou’s photographs were produced by the Swiss publishing house Guilde du Livre: the 1953 “La Grèce: à Ciel Ouvert (Greece: Open Skies)” and “Iles Grecques (Greek Islands)” in 1956. Her work was later published in the posthumous collection “Images of Despair and Hope: Greece 1940-1960” as a complimentary volume to the 1995 Athens retrospective presented by gallery owners Mouseio Benake and Renes Xippas.

Voula Papaïoannou passed away in Athens, Greece in 1990 at the age of ninety-two. Her photographs are in both private and public collections, including the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture in Athens. Since her death, Papaïoannou’s work continues to be presented in many solo and group exhibitions including one at Barcelona’s cntemporary art and learning center, La Virreina Image Center.

The Benaki Museum of Greek Culture’s website is located at: https://www.benaki.org/index.php?lang=en

Note: All images of Voula Papaïoannou’s work in this article are from the collection of the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture unless otherwise noted.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Voula Papaïoannou”, Date Unknown, Benaki Museum of Greek Culture, Athens, Greece

Second Insert Image: Voula Papaïoannou, “View of Lycabettus from the Acropolis, Athens”, circa 1950, Gelatin Silver Print, 43 x 41.9 cm, Benaki Museum, Athens Greece

Third Insert Image: Voula Papaïoannou, “Women Transporting Mud for Road Construction, Sellades, Arta Prefecture”, 1946, Gelatin Silver Print, 43 x 34 cm, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece

Bottom Insert Image: Voula Papaïoannou, “Mykonos”, circa 1959, Gelatin Silver Print, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece

The Photography of Robert Doisneau

Born in April of 1912 at Gentilly, a commune in Paris’s southern suburbs, Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. One of the pioneers of photojournalism, he was a strong advocate of Humanist Photography which, instead of focusing on newsworthy events, placed emphasis on everyday human experiences with all their customs and mannerisms. Doisneau is best known for his modest images of intermingled social classes and eccentrics in contemporary Paris cafes and streets.

Robert Doisneau was orphaned at an early age with the deaths of both his father in World War I and his mother three years later. Raised by an aunt, he enrolled at the age of thirteen in the École Estienne from which he graduated with lithography and engraving diplomas in 1929. It was during these studies that Doisseau began taking his first photographs; he shot images of the city’s cobbled streets before progressing onto adult portraits. At the end of the 1920s, Doisneau was employed as an advertising draftsman for Atelier Ullmann. Seizing the opportunity to work as a camera assistant in its graphic studio, he later became a staff photographer.

In 1931, Doisneau became an assistant to the modernist photographer André Vigneau, known for his photographic work in the three volume “Encyclopédia Photographique de l’Art: Le Musée du Louvre” and other museum art books. In 1932 Doisneau sold his first photographic story to the Excelsior magazine. After five years of working as an advertising photographer for Renault, he earned his living by doing freelance advertising, engraving and postcard photography. In 1939, Doisneau was hired by the Rapho, a press agency founded by Hungarian immigrant Charles Rado which specialized in humanist photography. It was through this agency that Doisneau began his professional street photography.

During World War II, Robert Doisneau served as both soldier and photographer. Until the end of the war, he used his draftsmanship, lettering and engraving skills to forge passports and identification papers for the French Resistance. Post-war, Doisneau returned to freelance photography; he sold his work to Life and other international magazines. Despite a brief membership with the Alliance Photo Agency and an invitation from Magnum Photos, Doisneau remained a loyal photographer for the Rapho press agency throughout his working life.

Doisneau reached the height of his career in the 1950s. His most recognizable work, “Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Volle)”, was done for an issue of Life magazine. This photograph of a couple kissing in the busy streets of Paris became an internationally recognized symbol of young love in Paris. For the photo shoot, Doisneau had posed the couple, aspiring actors Françoise Delbart and Jacques Carteaud, at the Place de la Concorde, the Rue de Rivoli, and finally the Hôtel de Ville. The photograph was published in the June 12, 1950 issue of Life; the relationship between the couple only lasted for nine months.

Robert Doisneau continued to work through the 1960s and 1970s as picture magazines were closing and television was gaining popularity. He produced children’s books, advertising photography, and worked on a series of celebrity portraits which included, among others, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Georges Braque, and Alberto Giacometti. Doisneau also worked with writers and poets such as Swiss-born novelist Blaise Cendrars, an important member of the Montparnasse artistic community, and poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, a prominent figure in the poetic realist film movement. Prévert wrote the script for the two-part, universally acclaimed 1945 “Les Enfants du Paradis” by Marcel Carné.

In 1936, Doisneau married Pierette Chaumaison, whom he had met on a holiday in 1934 when she bicycled through the village. Two daughters, Annette and Francine, were born through the marriage; Francine would later work as Doisneau’s assistant from 1979 until his death. Pierette Chaumaison died in 1993 suffering from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Robert Doisneau died six months later in April of 1994, after a triple heart bypass and suffering from acute pancreatitis. A shy and humble man by nature, he personally delivered his photographic work to his clients even at the height of his fame. Doisneau is buried, next to his wife, in the cemetery located at Raizeux in north-central France.

Note: Robert Doisneau’s photo archives include approximately four-hundred fifty thousand photographs. He personally established a method of thematic sorting to simplify research. At the Atelier of Robert Doisneau, ARD, there are currently fifty-one portfolios online for viewing. The atelier’s website address is: https://www.robert-doisneau.com/en/atelier/

Top Insert Image: Robert Doisneau, “Self Portrait”, 1947, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Robert Doisneau, “Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (Kiss by the Hôtel de Volle)”, 1950, Gelatin Silver Print

Third Insert Image: Robert Doisneau, “Les Frères, Rue du Docteur Lecène, Paris”, 1934, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Gérard Dussandier, “Robert Doisneau”, 1960-1969, Gelatin Silver Print