[1] Doisneau is remembered for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes.

Influenced by the work of André Kertész, Eugène Atget, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, in more than twenty books of photography, he presented a charming vision of human frailty and life as a series of quiet, incongruous moments.

[citation needed] Doisneau's father, a plumber, died on active service in World War I, when his son was about four.

[6] In 1991, he said that the years at the Renault car factory marked "the beginning of his career as a photographer and the end of his youth."

In 1939, he was later hired by Charles Rado of the Rapho photographic agency and traveled throughout France in search of picture stories.

Doisneau worked at the Rapho agency until the outbreak of World War II, whereupon he was drafted into the French army as both a soldier and photographer.

He was in the army until 1940 and, from then until the end of the war in 1945, used his draughtsmanship, lettering artistry, and engraving skills to forge passports and identification papers for the French Resistance.

The editors believed he would bring a fresh and more casual look the magazine but Doisneau did not enjoy photographing beautiful women in elegant surroundings; he preferred street photography.

Le Groupe des XV was established in 1946 in Paris to promote photography as art and drawing attention to the preservation of French photographic heritage, and Doisneau joined in 1950 and participated alongside Rene-Jacques, Willy Ronis, and Pierre Jahan.

Doisneau continued to work, producing children's books, advertising photography, and celebrity portraits including Alberto Giacometti, Jean Cocteau, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, and Pablo Picasso.

Doisneau worked with writers and poets such as Blaise Cendrars and Jacques Prévert, and he credited Prevert with giving him the confidence to photograph the everyday street scenes that most people simply ignored.

Many of his portraits and photographs of Paris from the end of World War II through the 1950s have been turned into calendars and postcards, and have become icons of French life.

[8] Jean and Denise Lavergne erroneously believed themselves to be the couple in The Kiss, and when Robert and Annette Doisneau (his older daughter and also his assistant at the time) met them for lunch in the 1980s he "did not want to shatter their dream" so he said nothing.

[8] In 1950, Françoise Bornet was given an original print of the photograph, bearing Doisneau's signature and stamp, as part of the payment for her "work".

"[3] Doisneau was in many ways a shy and humble man, similar to his photography, still delivering his own work at the height of his fame.

He chastised Francine for charging an "indecent" daily fee of £2,000 for his work on a beer advertising campaign – he wanted only the rate of an "artisan photographer".

In 1992 the French actress and producer Sabine Azéma made the film Bonjour Monsieur Doisneau.