Pordenone, 21 November (askanews) – Pordenone prepares to become the Italian Capital of Culture 2027 and also does it through photography, following the common thread of the word “Reading”, which guides the candidacy project. And the major exhibition at the Bertoia Gallery is dedicated to Robert Doisneau, the famous French photographer, who was able to read, with his affectionate and ironic gaze, society, especially Paris, but with an already universal point of view.
“Exhibitions like the one that Doisneau is holding in Pordenone in 2025 – Alberto Parigi, Member of the Council for Culture and Major Events of the Friulian Municipality, told askanews – means that we have built a multi-year project. We do not want to be the cultural capital of Italy only in 2027, but we are building an important thing before, which during this time will be in the spotlight and then also after, because we want to leave a legacy. And we want to take a step further, an improvement of Pordenone, which ultimately ignite a lighthouse in this region that does not exist in the national collective imagination, we want to place it squarely in this collective imagination and ensure that this city is seen without stereotypes, not only as a city of manufacturing, industry, business, but also a city that expresses a level of culture with absolute value”.
On display are the most famous photographs, such as the most humane portrait of Pablo Picasso or the very famous Kiss from the Hotel de Ville, but also photographs of his youth, war stories, related to the world of work, to little-known color photographs, which today have absolute novelty. “In this project – explains Gabriel Bauret, who curated the exhibition with his wife Chantal – the idea was to discover the spirit of the author behind the photos. We tried to understand a little about the way he created, what interests Robert Doisneau had in his life and in his mind, because it’s not just a picture, behind the picture there is a person.”
Another important aspect to keep in mind when talking about Doisneau, but which applies to all photography, is the relationship between the so-called reality of the world and the construction of the image. “Today we can see – adds Bauret – that there is no difference between the photographs he took while on duty, for example Kiss of the Hotel de Ville, taken for Life magazine, and the photographs he took for personal purposes. The second aspect is that there are certainly some photos that are reportage, shots from the street, but there are also those that are doctored. And we don’t see any difference. There is a unity of style, which unites all the different aspects of his work.”
The exhibition “Robert Doisneau – Views that tell” is part of a joint project with three other photography exhibitions and will remain open to the public until April 6, 2026.
