Francine Deroudille and Annette Doisneau preserve their father’s archives at the Atelier Robert Doisneau. They continue to keep his work alive through exhibitions and publications.

So here we are in the Atelier Robert Doisneau, which was once the family apartment.

Photography has always been omnipresent. My sister and I lived in the vapours of hyposulphite and hydroquinone.

The life of the family revolved around this kind of little machine for which we all had the greatest respect, after all. It was an extension of his hand, it was really the absolute working tool. We never saw him leave without his Rolleiflex.

These are the photos of Lyon. These are the contact sheets of the 1950 report. The original plates, here they are.

This is the Square Robert Doisneau.

This room used to be the girls’ bedroom, since it was the family apartment. So it became the archive room.

I’ll let you see if you want.

We had a tradition: every year he made a greeting card with us, of course! After that, he continued with the grandchildren.

Look at how I got started… I am the little Jesus! Do you recognize me? See?

It’s true that we were photographed a lot. It’s me there, you see! In the middle of the equipment. And yes, of course, we lived in it.

But then it never stopped. We were fed up. He always said: « It’s the last, it’s the last! » It was never the last. And we had had enough.

Next to it was his office. There was a laboratory in which he was practically every day.

It’s the place of magic, it’s the place of magic. That is to say that the photographer arrives with his equipment. And then the development begins. We hear him triumph when there’s something on the film.

The great relief of photographers who experienced this terrible anguish of not knowing what they were bringing back. This is something that we can no longer imagine today in the digital age.

And this laboratory has been replaced by a cold room, in which the entire collection of negatives is kept, which is huge for a photographer.

It’s a very large collection of 450,000 negatives. But it takes up little space.

You see, this is the place where the negatives are kept: the 6×6, that is to say all the photos he took with a Rolleiflex or with a square format camera.

And there are the 24×36.

We have the negatives there and on the other side we can read: Campaign for Sugar, Woman in Her Kitchen, February 16, 1961.

When we are asked for a photo, we immediately find the information. Sometimes it amuses the girls in the agency a lot because I can give them the exact time the photo was taken.

So that’s what we call a well-ordered collection.

That’s it, we have to be in Lyon.

And in these diaries, he wrote down everything that could be essential for his travels. On May 10, he left for Lyon. Jean-Jacques Leyrand at Le Progrès.

We follow him in his footsteps with his little notebooks.

He had both an appointment with Brigitte Bardot and, in the afternoon, a photo shoot at a dentist.

You see, there’s a kind of mishmash that makes you understand the life he had, which was really a hyperactive craftsman’s life.

He worked all the time. We always saw him working. He hated holidays. He loved only one thing: angling. He loved it!

And he’d be happy to see all that. I think about him a lot, it’s true.

To have lived next to someone who, at the end of his life, left us something called a work, and on which we can continue to work.

Every morning, it continues to give meaning to my life. It continues to give meaning to my life.

Or what is left of it.