Paris: Portrait of a City
Product ID: 54420916
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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 leads us through what Goethe described as a "universal city where every step upon a bridge or a square recalls a great past, where a fragment of history is unrolled at the corner of every street." The history of Paris is recounted in photographs ranging from Daguerre's early incunabula to the most recent images--an almost complete record of over a century and a half of transformations and a vast panorama spanning more than 600 pages and 500 photographs. This book brings together the past and the present, the monumental and the everyday, objects and people. Images captured by the most illustrious photographers--Daguerre, Marville, Atget, Lartigue, Brassaï, Kertész, Ronis, 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. Presenting an exciting patchwork of images from past and present, Paris: Portrait of a City is a huge and unique photographic study that, in a way, is the true family album of all Parisians. It is to them, and to all lovers of this capital city, that this vibrant, loving, and tender testimony is dedicated. Review: Truly beautiful photographs telling the story of Paris from the first ... - Truly beautiful photographs telling the story of Paris from the first days of the camera. Full of insights into the social history of the Parisians as well as fantastic insights into the evolution of the city we know today eg the stages of building the Eiffel Tower. It made a brilliant present for someone who has only just fallen in love with Paris and wants to get to know it better. Review: IF YOU LOVE PARIS, BUY THIS BOOK - What a wonderful book - magic on every page, a real treasurehouse of Paris history. Each picture tells a moving story.
| Best Sellers Rank | 150,021 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 28 in European Travel Photography 55 in History of Photography 61 in Photo Essays (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.7 out of 5 stars 278 Reviews |
M**D
Truly beautiful photographs telling the story of Paris from the first ...
Truly beautiful photographs telling the story of Paris from the first days of the camera. Full of insights into the social history of the Parisians as well as fantastic insights into the evolution of the city we know today eg the stages of building the Eiffel Tower. It made a brilliant present for someone who has only just fallen in love with Paris and wants to get to know it better.
P**S
IF YOU LOVE PARIS, BUY THIS BOOK
What a wonderful book - magic on every page, a real treasurehouse of Paris history. Each picture tells a moving story.
N**R
Five Stars
A Joy to read and to look at the great photos of this wonderful city.
W**4
Love it
Stunning coffee table book well worth the price
J**J
I'm buying another one !
Astonishing value and such excellent quality of content and print.
M**N
Stunning
Stunning book
S**O
History
This book is a fine illustrated and written coverage of Paris from 1800 to the present days. I enjoyed it a lot.
S**L
Paris
The book has got excellent pictures which I like & also the pull out regarding how the Eiffell Tower was constructed
P**L
Un must have per coffee table
Regalo molto apprezzato
A**O
Excelente
Excelente livro. Mostra diferentes aspectos de Paris ao longo do tempo. Fotos muito bonitas. O livro tem um grande porte e é pesado. Ele chegou com um pequeno amassado em sua capa. Uma excelente peça de decoração e cultural também.
H**I
An exquisite visual history. It's not the book I wanted, but I cannot send it back.
Last night, I spent about half an hour with this book. I was awed. Its photos and illustrations filled me with the same level of wonder, curiosity, and admiration that I feel for Paris itself. And it manages to do it without going overboard with gaudy fetishism of the city. Most images are impossibly mind-blowing, like the 1895 photo of a train that smashed through the second-story wall of a train station, which Antonin Neurdein executed with beautiful composition and technical perfection. Others tell how the Paris we know today came to be. An 1860 image depicts swaths of demolished medieval homes, buildings razed to make way for Haussman's renovation. The three-decade period remade the cramped, disorganized city with wide boulevards and the harmonious architecture of cream-colored stone buildings that now rise to uniform heights. Other photos add to the book's honest and not-too-romanticized vision of the city. Innovative fashion photos delight. Henri Cartier-Bresson's images appear, but not to serve a now-clichéd ideal of Paris. Instead, a handful of his lesser-known photos enrich the book without hard-selling the fanciful fairy tale of the city. "Paris. Portrait of a City" isn't the book I intended to buy. When a friend described an extraordinary book about Paris -- without providing the title -- this is what I purchased. It wasn't what I was looking for, but I fell in love. I can't wait to spend more time with it.
K**A
This is not a guide book. This book shows ...
This is not a guide book. This book shows you different times of France, and captures everyday moments of different époques.
K**A
最高のパリの歴史書で最高の写真集
携帯の翻訳を片手に、じっくり楽しんでいます。紙質、写真のシャープさ、一流写真家の作品ばかり、どれをとっても最高です。こんなに安価で良いのでしょうか。 早くコロナが終息してほしい。明日にでもパリに行きたくなります。ありがとう!
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