A city built on two millennia of history, Paris is entering the third century of its love story with photography. It was on the banks of the Seine that Niépce and Daguerre officially gave birth to this new art that has flourished ever since, developing a distinctive language and becoming a vital tool of knowledge. Paris: Portrait of a City recounts the history of the city in photographs ranging from Daguerre’s early incunabula to the most recent images—a span of over a century and a half of transformations. This book brings together the past and the present, the monumental and the everyday, objects and people. Images captured by the most illustrious photographers—Marville, Atget, Lartigue, Brassaï, Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson and many more—but also by many unknown photographers, attempt to bottle just a little of that “Parisian air,” something of that particular poetry given out by the stones and inhabitants of a constantly changing city that has inspired untold numbers of writers and artists over the ages.

About the series: Each compact and dynamic volume in TASCHEN’s Portrait of a City Piccolo series distills the vitality and history of each city into a billet doux packed with 150 photos accompanied by informative captions and inspiring quotations.

The editor:
Jean Claude Gautrand, born in 1932, is one of France’s most distinguished experts on photography. An active photographer since 1960, he has also made a name for himself as a historian, journalist and critic, with numerous publications. He is the author of the TASCHEN books Paris mon amour (1999), Doisneau (2003), Brassaï (2004), Ronis(2005) and Paris, Portrait of a City (2011).