C’est la vie! Robert Doisneau photo exhibit a picture window into the world of Paris

Somewhere in the middle of the more than 100 black-and-white photographs in “Robert Doisneau’s Paris,” a new show opening today at the Portland Museum of Art, you will possibly have to face a conundrum.

First you will be drawn in by the images of life in Paris and surrounding suburbs from the 1930s through the 1980s. You will laugh at the photo of a couple looking in a gallery window, the woman’s attention on fine art and the man’s glance toward a racy shot of a woman’s naked backside. Or the shot of construction workers erecting a statue of Venus, their hands hoisting the statue by the breasts. You will swoon at the elegance of flowers and food and cobblestone street life. You will marvel at the commentaries about bourgeois life, marital relationships, animal instincts and childish zeal.

Then you will begin to wonder about Doisneau, a French photographer whose jocular depictions of Paris life and human foibles were featured in Life and Vogue, and whose name frequently comes up alongside those of Brassai and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Questions may begin to arise in some distant part of your thoughts when you see girls taking notes in their schoolbooks, or a tattooed man smoking a cigarette in bed and peering up at posters from a girlie magazine, or Picasso at the dining table with his hands represented by fat loaves of finger-shaped bread.

Here’s what may intrude upon your enjoyment: Did Doisneau pose those photographs?

The answer comes glaringly in his most famous photograph, “Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville,” which is also, arguably, one of the most famous photographs of all time. It is also one of the most infamous. Taken in 1950, the photo appeared originally in Life magazine, and has been popularized internationally with greeting cards, posters, calendars, T-shirts and other kitschy baubles. In the PMA show, it is the only photo given a wall completely of its own.

In 1993, “The Kiss at City Hall,” as it is called in English, was also the subject of a legal dispute when a couple stepped forward claiming that they were the ones in the photo and should be duly compensated for the use of their images.

The case was dismissed, but Doisneau copped to hiring an actor and her boyfriend to pose for 500 francs. Indeed, Doisneau, who died the next year, often used actors, models and “sets” to create and re-create scenes for his photography.

Doisneau’s directorial input is noticeable in the unlikely carefulness with which a pair of spectacles is laid in the foreground of one photo, or a near-kiss between a bicycle cart driver and his girlfriend in the cart.

But it will all come down to you, rather than Doisneau, in the final analysis. Is he an artist or a photojournalist? Is he an art photographer or a documentarian? Can he be both at once? Is a photo that looks unposed still be a piece of art if models are involved? If tampering takes place? Or, better put, if placement gets tampered with?

While the PMA show, curated by Graham Howe and organized by the Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions of Los Angeles, does not address these issues, surely they will be in the ether as many museum-goers visit this retrospective, which runs through March 24.

“Isn’t it fun? These are fun,” said Carrie Haslett, the curator of European painting and sculpture at PMA, and local coordinator for this show. Haslett, who arrived recently from Los Angeles to take the curatorial position, was walking through the large gallery while the final touches were taking place in the preparation for opening. “These photographs are easily accessible for people from all walks of life and age groups. Even if you aren’t familiar with the events of the 1940s and 1950s, these scenes seem familiar.”

A Cartier-Bresson show was originally scheduled for this time slot, she said, but when that fell through, the Doisneau show was a natural replacement. Doisneau is, suggested one onlooker, “the Norman Rockwell of France.”

It’s a worthy comparison in at least one regard. Doisneau, like Rockwell, is easy. You can go from photo to photo finding ample reasons to smile or gush or giggle or coo. It’s all there and, at times, deliberately.

But it would be wrong to assess Doisneau as facile. You can linger over his photographs for a long, long time – noticing shadows falling into the frame, or cropped hands, bicycle wheels, signs just outside the shot, or the scowl of a woman in the background. The very gravel and wet glistening of an early Paris rue are a window into the world that interested Doisneau.

The butchers listening to an accordion player, mischievous schoolboys ringing a doorbell and running, a bride and groom heading to a cafe, a couple trysting in midday on a park bench at the Jardin des Tuileries, gamblers at a bar, a man sitting alone with his dog at an outdoor cafe. It’s all so tantalizingly French that you may want to light up a Gauloise and kiss the nearest person in a scarf.

For anyone who appreciates the beauty and cleanness of Doisneau’s camerawork, the earlier mentioned dispute about authenticity and ethics may melt into the gauzy, white-lit background of this show. After all, some of the greatest photographers of the 20th century posed their subjects quite self-consciously. Think of Alfred Stieglitz’s shots of Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands. Think of Robert Mapplethorpe’s flowers. Or Annie Leibovitz’s celebrity shots and Bruce Weber’s fashion spreads. Posed, posed, posed. And brilliant.

You can argue that they are studio photographers but, as Doisneau himself suggested, Paris was his studio. “Paris is a theater where you buy your seat by wasting time,” he said.

True, there are times when Doisneau’s work runs into the trite – a grinning sailor holding a bottle with a miniature cello in it. But it’s a corny European trifle, and, in that particular shot, the relationship of lines between the sailor’s cap and the lighthouse behind him are so completely elegant and certain that there’s room for both annoyance and admiration.

For the most part, however, to engage with Doisneau’s work is to see into the thoughts of a man whose view of Paris was marked by a bohemian wit, a textured palette, and a crystalline understanding of desire, longing, paradox and intimacy. He also had an early education in the power of image.

Born in 1912 in the suburbs of Paris, Doisneau went to art school in Paris and then learned photography while working in the advertising department of a pharmaceutical firm. As early as 1932, he was selling his photography to newspapers, but joined the profession officially when he joined the advertising staff at the Renault car factory.

During World War II, he joined the French Resistance, for which he forged passports and other documents while also covering the Occupation and Liberation of Paris for periodicals. After the war, he became the Doisneau that is primarily represented in the PMA show.

Doisneau apparently never did well in formal training. He didn’t hold prolonged contracts with employment. He was far better suited to roving the streets at night, or watching bebop dancers in a club, striptease acts, or immortalizing writer Colette in the Palais Royal, or seeing a family blowing bubbles through the windows of an opulent apartment in the 10th Arrondissement. Doisneau watched the sun fall onto statues in the many gardens around Paris, or on coal gatherers, or children playing in a junkyard and caught them as looming, haunting, ghostly characters.

One of my favorite pieces in the show is “Three Little Children in White” at the Jardin du Parc Monceau. Dressed all in white, they hum as if they are angels or imps. Scattered on other benches are other Parisians doing what Parisians do so well when there’s a bench and a tree and a sliver of sunlight to enjoy. It’s an ethereal shot, both funny and freaky.

I was also drawn to the very last photo in the collection: Doisneau’s self-portrait. Doisneau, at 5 feet, 2 inches tall, was a small man. But here, he has posed himself next to a tall pillar that associatively elongates him. The words “Raphael” and “le dictateur” appear on worn signs behind him. His feet balance on the damp ground beneath him. The sky, typically, is an overcast white. In his hands, he holds a camera.

Does it matter to me that Doisneau may have posed the photo? Not a bit. The only part of this show I resented was that I did not plan to go directly from the museum to the airport and catch the first flight to rainy, sunny, stunning Paris.

“Robert Doisneau’s Paris” is on view through March 24 at the Portland Museum of Art. Call 775-6148 for general information or 1-800-639-4067 for recording. The web site is: www.portlandmuseum.org.