Robert Doisneau, un Photographe au Muséum

Robert Doisneau is one of the best known and most exhibited of all French photographers. But just when you thought you’d seen it all, the venerable Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle goes and unveils a new series of photos taken in its own corridors between 1942 and 1943. These previously unseen pictures were shot as part of a project documenting the museum’s resident scientists’ continued work during the Second World War. The project was eventually abandoned, but Doisneau’s tender images with their expressionist-style lighting confer a thick air of mystery, perfectly suiting the museum’s permanently eerie, almost sci-fi feel. More modern photographs from the 1990s also provide context.

TRANSLATION: HUW OLIVER