# French humanist photography

> Black-and-white pictures of ordinary people in the streets, cafés, riverbanks and working-class districts of Paris and its suburbs, made with small handheld cameras in available light and published in illustrated magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s. The photographer waits, unnoticed, for the instant when gesture and setting meet: lovers, children at play, a man leaping a puddle, the city under street lamps at night. The tone is affectionate and often funny; some famous pictures were quietly set up.

- Period: 1930–1968
- Where it began: Paris and its working-class districts and suburbs, from about 1930
- Kind: Street & snapshot
- Also called: Photographie humaniste, Humanist street photography, The French humanist school
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/humanist-photography/

## How the look is made

- Walk the streets, bistros, fairs and suburbs and photograph ordinary people living their day.
- Use a small camera with a normal lens at eye level, and stay unnoticed.
- Wait for the instant when a gesture and the geometry of the place come together, and release then.
- Look for warmth and wit rather than misery or spectacle: lovers, children, workers at rest.
- Work in available light: soft grey daylight by day, street lamps and fog by night, and flash only when there is nothing else.
- Print the whole frame in soft, full greys, made for a magazine page.

## How it is lit

- Soft grey overcast daylight in the street, no fill.
- Street lamps, lit windows and fog at night, exposed for seconds.
- Whatever light a bistro, dance hall or fairground has, rarely flash.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.
- Lamp in the scene: a lamp, sign or screen, from the camera’s left, at the side, hard.

## Camera settings

40–50 mm · f/2.8–f/11 · 1/500–4 s · ISO 50–400 (on full-frame), inferred. Cartier-Bresson's Leica with a 50 mm lens, Rolleiflexes at waist level (75 mm, about 41 mm equivalent) and Brassaï's 6 × 9 cm Voigtländer on a tripod, where café light needed 3–4 s or more. Daylight at f/5.6–f/11 and 1/125–1/500 s, and wider stops indoors, are inferred.

## Directing people

Not posed: passers-by walk, lovers embrace on a pavement or a bench, children play and leap, workers rest and talk, all at ease and absorbed in their own day, seldom looking at the camera, faces calm or lit by a small smile. A scene that is set up is played to look found, as if caught mid-stride.

## Styling

Nothing is styled: people wear their own everyday clothes (berets, caps, aprons, overcoats, Sunday best on a holiday) in their own streets, cafés, courtyards and riverbanks; when a scene is set up, the actors keep ordinary clothes and a real street so that it still looks found.

## Before you shoot it

These are real people photographed in public, often recognisable, sometimes children; France recognises a right to one's image, and in 1992 a couple who believed they were Doisneau's kissers sued him (the claims were dismissed in 1993). Several celebrated 'candid' pictures were set up. Do not present generated images as vintage Paris photographs or as found moments, and do not use the likeness of real people; for new street work, be open about any staging and ask people, especially parents of children, before publishing. The photographs are in copyright: credit the photographers and their estates or agencies.

## Photographs

- © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Saif, Paris / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Collection SFMOMA, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Spadarella. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/83.190
- © Robert Doisneau / Gamma-Rapho. Boca Raton Museum of Art, bequest of Isadore and Kelly Friedman. In copyright, linked: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/le-basier-de-l-hotel-de-ville-paris-robert-doisneau/rgEf9FnkCCusUg
- © Sabine Weiss. Collection SFMOMA, Fund of the '80s purchase. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/84.277
- Brassaï (in copyright; the page states no rights holder). Fundación Televisa Collection and Archive, Mexico City. In copyright, linked: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/city-island-paris-at-night-brassa%C3%AF/1wHxs98vUSeOGQ

## Sources

- Humanist photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_photography (France 1930–1960 as a historical movement; everyday subjects; magazines Vu, Regards, Point de vue, Paris Match, Picture Post, Life, Réalités; Leica, Rolleiflex at waist level, Ermanox, Contax; available light; Groupe des XV 1946–1957; Five French Photographers, MoMA 1951–52; decline as television displaced magazines in the late 1960s)
- Photographie humaniste, Wikipédia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographie_humaniste (emerged about 1930 in working-class Paris and suburbs, flourished 1945–1960; Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Ronis, Izis, Boubat, Brassaï; commissioned prints studied and retouched in the laboratory)
- Henri Cartier-Bresson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson (Leica with 50 mm lens and black tape; Images à la sauvette 1952; the decisive moment; Surrealists at Café Cyrano; Magnum 1947; uncropped prints with black border; flash 'impolite')
- Robert Doisneau, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Doisneau (Rapho; Vogue from 1948; Le Baiser in Life 12 June 1950; La Banlieue de Paris 1949 with Cendrars; irony and children's street culture)
- Le Baiser de l'hôtel de ville, Wikipédia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Baiser_de_l%27h%C3%B4tel_de_ville (staged with two paid drama students, Françoise Delbart and Jacques Carteaud; lawsuits of 1992, dismissed 1993, upheld 1996 and 1999)
- Le Basier [sic] de L'Hotel de Ville, Paris, Boca Raton Museum of Art on Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/le-basier-de-l-hotel-de-ville-paris-robert-doisneau/rgEf9FnkCCusUg (Doisneau composed and planned pictures, waiting for moments or setting them up)
- Brassaï, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassa%C3%AF (Paris de nuit, Arts et Métiers Graphiques 1933, text by Paul Morand; tutored by André Kertész)
- Willy Ronis, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Ronis (Rapho 1946; first French photographer to work for Life; Nu provençal 1949; Belleville-Ménilmontant, Arthaud 1954; Five French Photographers at MoMA)
- André Kertész, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Kert%C3%A9sz (Leica from 1928; Vu; Film und Foto, Stuttgart 1929; Cartier-Bresson: 'We all owe him a great deal' — the link from the New Vision to the humanists)
- Henri Cartier-Bresson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Cartier-Bresson (a Leica with a 50 mm lens, its chrome covered with black tape; flash 'impolite')
- Humanist photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_photography (small cameras such as the Leica, the Rolleiflex used at waist level, the Ermanox and the Contax; available light)
- Colin L. Westerbeck Jr., 'Night Light: Brassaï and Weegee', Artforum, December 1976: https://www.artforum.com/features/night-light-brassai-and-weegee-214114/ ('The Bergheil Voigtlander camera he used in the '30s, a 6 x 9 cm plate camera, had to be mounted on a tripod and, under the available light in the cafes, would usually have required exposures of three or four seconds or more, sometimes much more'; otherwise a magnesium-powder flash fired by an assistant)
- Rolliflex camera, Science Museum Group Collection (Kodak Collection): https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8206661 (twin-lens reflex for 120 roll film 2¼ × 2¼ in.; taking lens Zeiss Tessar 7.5 cm f/3.5–22; shutter 1 to 1/300 s, B and T)
- Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Phillips: https://www.phillips.com/detail/henri-cartier-bresson/105336 ('In 1932, a young Henri Cartier-Bresson crouched behind the fence at Paris's Saint-Lazare train station taking with his Leica camera')
- Rudolph Chelminski, 'Paris, Mon Amour', Smithsonian Magazine, July 2005: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/paris-mon-amour-73220943/ (on the 1950 Life assignment that produced Le Baiser de l'hôtel de ville: 'Armed with his trusty Rolleiflex, Doisneau ...')
- Kodak Tri-X, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Tri-X (introduced around 1940 in sheets rated ASA 200 daylight; released in 35 mm and 120 in 1954; usually rated ISO 400; pushing to EI 800 gives very good results, EI 1600 needs more sophisticated processing, stand development reaches EI 3200)

---

From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/humanist-photography/#sheet