NEW YORK, NY.- A new photobook presents remarkable images of postwar Paris made by Todd Webb (1905-2000), a major American photographic documentarian.
Paris: A Love Story, 1948-1952 (Damiani Books, 2025) is a personal, beautiful, and lasting record of postwar Paris, featuring 70 duotone images Webb shot as he took to the streets, inspired in part by the work of Eugène Atget.
The book is edited with text by former LIFE magazine editor in chief Bill Shapiro—including an interview with renowned curator Keith Davis, who brought Webb’s work back into the public eye 40 years ago—and features dozens of never-before-published photos, as well as excerpts from Webb's journal.
After working as a stockbroker, gold prospector, forest ranger, and a photographer during World War II, Webb decided to make his career in the photo profession. After several years photographing New York City—socializing with Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Berenice Abbott, and Minor White—he moved to Paris in the late 1940s and made his first negatives with an 8x10 camera. He quickly found himself having the time of his life, mingling with artists such as Gordon Parks, Man Ray, and Brassaï, as well as meeting a fascinating American woman who he would marry.
In his journal, Webb often worried about money and whether he could make it in the City of Love, but he persevered. “It is silly to say that I am nuts about Paris but I am,” he wrote. “And with the light I had today it is a photographers dream.”
Webb caught Paris in all seasons and times of day, in quiet alleys and bustling streets. Highlights include photographs of advertising posters, including an Edith Piaf performance; a rear view of a couple sitting in Luxembourg Gardens that Webb quickly snapped with his Leica camera as he passed; the scene at a café on the Champs Elysees, as patrons seem to wearily watch the world go by; and a Metro station entrance shrouded in fog.
“Webb set out to see a city, and to record it,” writes Bill Shapiro in the introduction. “He photographed the aging buildings, peeling advertisements, and old-world streetlamps, which spoke to him of the sweep of time; the tradespeople, peddlers, and performers making their way through the streets; the narrow passageways that created endless opportunities for a disciplined photographer waiting for a few seconds of ethereal light.”
Todd Webb (1905-2000) is an American artist best known for his photographs of New York and Paris, and of Georgia O’Keeffe. Until he retired in the 1980’s, Todd Webb produced a unique body of work, which has attained an important place in the canon of American photographic history. Frequently referred to as “an historian with a camera,” Webb’s rich images document life all over the world. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is included in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Bill Shapiro is the former editor in chief of LIFE magazine.
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