Robert DOISNEAU

Every fortnight, Artprice provides a short round up of art market news: Robert Doisneau at Musée Rodin. Art Basel Hong Kong: Starting soon. The artists at Art Karlsruhe

The photojournalism market is booming. Turnover at auction has risen by more than 250% in 10 years, and the trend is strong in the USA, France and the UK.For many years photojournalism was considered a secondary form of art, much like scientific or ethnographic photography. Since the 1950s however it has become well established, partly thanks to World Press Photo, with its annual contest celebrating the year’s best journalistic photographs, and a number of exhibitions underlining the news photo’s dual role as documentary testimony and aesthetic artefact.

Between photo-journalism and picturesque paintings of society, humanist photography is a superb witness of people’s mannerisms and customs. The core of this artistic current occurred after WWII through to the late 1960s. The photographs of Robert DOISNEAU, Édouard BOUBAT, BRASSAÏ, Willy RONIS, and others, fed the newspapers and magazines of the era …and are often reproduced today. These photographs – charged with emotion and capturing fleeting moments of everyday life – have the undeniable documentary value of authenticity, but simultaneously, via their black and white medium, express a certain aesthetic of nostalgia. Over the years, this duality has particularly attracted collectors who, today, are not frightened to pay high prices for big names in photography.