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Paris Exhibition: Doisneau Paris les Halles, Feb. 8 through April 28, 2012
Architectural rendering of Victor Baltard's Les Halles pavillions known as Les Halles. Public domain image.
Doisneau: Paris les Halles, an exhibition
February 8 through April 28, 2012 at Hôtel de Ville
Background of Les Halles and Doisneau's connection
Today the Les Halles section of Paris is in flux again, but changes now underway (here are architectural renderings) won't threaten the way of life for French workers and residents as photographer Robert Doisneau witnessed from the 1930s through the 1970s.
Napoléon III conceived Halles de Paris as one of his many projects designed to showcase Paris as the world's most beautiful city. Architects Victor Baltard and Félix Callet won design rights; and the first Pavillon des Halles built of stone opened in early 1848. But already the stone seemed dated to Napoléon and Empress Eugenie after they learned of more modern construction methods. So the building was torn down and Baltard designed a spectacular large cast iron and glass structure opened in 1853. Several more pavillions were added until the 1930s and the large cast iron and glass stations with their unofficial surrounding shops served as the main Paris market for over 100 years. When you think of a Paris covered market even today, images of these structures come to mind, though few travelers today have seen Les Halles in its glory days.
Jean Béraud's painting of Les Halles in 1879. Courtesy of the Haggin Museum.
Les Halles was the heart of Paris and the vibrant commercial center of Paris. Photographer Robert Doisneau was there starting in the 1930s, capturing life as it was with his camera and in the process leading an art form known today as "street photography." Quite unlike Impressionist painters like Jean Béraud's painting (above), Doisneau's photography reveals the genuine Paris as it then was.
Doisneau photo of Les Halles in 1945. Photo was taken at the 2006 Doisneau exhibition held at Hôtel de Ville.
The population of Paris doubled by the 1950s, and the crowded, trash-laden Les Halles area became an eyesore, considered an embarrassment by those who wanted the growing tourism trade to promote Paris as a modern city without its "underclass" on display in the heart of the Right Bank. Les Halles impeded traffic flow, and the trash piles of market refuse (and associated stench) were overwhelming. Soup lines at L'église Saint-Eustache were blamed for attracting undesirables who also picked through the same trash in search of food. Doisneau chose to spend his life among such people, photographing the clochards, vendors and their children in their daily activities, seemingly unaware of the photographer and his camera.
In the 1950s talk began of moving the market out of the heart of Paris and to Rungis, a suburb by the Orly Airport, a plan supported by French President Georges Pompidou and former President Charles de Gaulle. For several years Les Halles workers and traditionalists opposed such change, certain such change would ruin local enterprise and lifestyle, such as it was. Photographer Doisneau, who by then had spent much of his life photographing people and buildings in the area, was one of many who stood up for the working class in opposition to those who would destroy Baltard's pavillions. Their efforts failed and Les Halles was demolished in the early 1970s, replaced first with a gaping hole filled in the late 1970s with concrete: a shopping center, Forum des Halles, a large RER/Métro station, parking lots and the Centre Pompidou museum.
Doisneau's photo of the 1971 demolition of Les Halles taken for the Rapho photo bureau.
Removing the Les Halles market hurt surrounding shops and cafés that catered to locals and workers who moved with the jobs out to Rungis. For a while the shopping center positioned itself as a luxury goods center. But the 1980s were the peak of shiny jumbo malls with mass merchants selling mass merchandise, which was precisely what upscale patrons didn't want. Fickle patrons moved on to the next "new thing" and the Forum des Halles has struggled since, getting by mostly with business at movie theaters, mobile phone shops, a FNAC, an H&M and roving vendors who move into vacant shops rented by the month, sometimes with the fixtures from the previous tenant still in place. It became a place to pass through, an underground transit stop, but rarely a destination. Many historians say development in the name of progress and selfish gain by those with no connection to the neighborhood ruined the district by driving a dagger through its soul.
Doisneau was a modest man who loved Paris and its most humble people, trying with his photography to show them with respect and dignity while showing life, he was quoted as saying, as he wished it were. His images show the highs and lows of lively Les Halles and its people before, through, and after its destruction. Early in his career he tried jobs as an advertising studio photographer with Renault automaker, Vogue magazine, and even Hollywood, but always he returned to the street photography he loved, saying he preferred to show real people in real situations over fantasy. None were better at showing Paris reality than Doisneau, who passed away in Paris in 1994.
In 2006, Hôtel de Ville presented another Doisneau exhibition that was spectacular. With over 400,000 film images in Doisneau's final collection, the City of Paris should have no trouble creating another landmark exhibition in 2012.
2012 Doisneau: Paris les Halles at Hôtel de Ville
The 2012 exhibition Doisneau: Paris les Halles will feature about 200 images of Les Halles, most black and white, but with a section devoted to Doisneau's color photographs from the 1960s.
While you're there, you may wish to buy the book by the same title published by Flammarion, which will surely be collectible. Limited copies are available via our Amazon.com link below (see image).
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Hôtel de Ville
29, rue de Rivoli, Paris 4th [click for map]
Métro: lines 1 and 11; stop: Hôtel de Ville; lines 1, 4, 7, 11, 14; stop: Châtelet
Admission: Free
Dates: February 8 through April 28, 2012
Open: Monday through Saturday, 10am—7pm (ticket office closes at 6:15pm)
To learn more
Atelier Robert Doisneau has online portfolios divided by subject
Read The Belly of the Beast by Émile Zola (see below)
©Dali Wiederhoft 2011
Dali Wiederhoft is the executive editor of BonjourParis. Please click on her name to read more of her stories published in BonjourParis.
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