{"id":446959,"date":"2025-12-14T18:12:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T18:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/446959\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T18:12:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T18:12:24","slug":"photographers-50-year-love-letter-to-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/446959\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer’s 50 Year Love Letter to Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ACaf\u00e9 de Flore, Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s, 2022. <\/p>\n

Photographer Peter Turnley arrived in Paris in 1975 aged 20. Since then he has thrown himself into the City of Light, documenting its comings and goings on his trusty Leicas. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile Paris is a large metropolitan city with problems that many big cities have, and some specific to Paris, it is without doubt the city in the world where one can see on a daily basis the most public expressions of love, romance, elegance, friendship, sensuality, and grace, in the world,\u201d Turnley tells PetaPixel. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a city that represents a multitude of tones of grey, making it a place where black and white photographs best express certain universal and timeless humanistic qualities.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"ABoulevard Saint-Germain, 1983. \"AnCaf\u00e9 Lacour, Saint-Paul, 1975. \"AParis, 1991.
\n \"ACaf\u00e9 de Flore, Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s 2024. \"ABrasserie de l\u2019Isle Saint-Louis, 1994. <\/p>\n

Turnley says he has documented Paris as much as any other photographer in the past 50 years. \u201cI am proud to think that my photographs carry on the strong legacy of humanistic photography that has been expressed by many of my predecessors like Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Boubat, Brassai, Weiss, Stettner, and others. Most were not only my mentors, but also my close friends.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TwoCaf\u00e9, the Marais, 1975. \"ARue de Lappe, Paris, 1984. \"AParis, 1982. \"AnMonsieur Bernard, Ile Saint-Louis, 1999.
\n \"APeter Turnley next to Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1981. <\/p>\n

Turnley, who has shot most of his photos on Leica M cameras \u2014 both analog and digital editions \u2014 says he is most interested in communicating what life in Paris feels like. <\/p>\n

\u201cI avoid communicating about photography as any form of formula,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat is most important is authenticity, emotion, and spontaneity. The great French photographer Robert Doisneau, whom I assisted in the early 1980s, once said to me, \u2018Peter, description kills.\u2019 Questions are always much more important than answers, in photography and in life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"TwoMa Bourgogne, Place des Vosges, 1982. \"CouplesEsplanade de Trocad\u00e9ro, 2012. \"APeter-Turnley in Paris, 2021. <\/p>\n

Turnley has worked for Newsweek, Harper\u2019s, Stern, Paris Match, Geo, LIFE, National Geographic, among many others. He has worked all over the world and has witnessed most major stories of international geopolitical and historic significance in the last 40 years. He has both American and French nationality. <\/p>\n

\u201cDuring my life in photography, I have documented most of the world\u2019s important news stories and have traveled to over 90 countries,\u201d he says. \u201cI have witnessed most of the wars in the world during this time, natural and man-made disasters, and major world socio-economic and geo-political change. I was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya, Haiti, and much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmid all this that has profoundly impacted my heart, there has been one constant: I have always returned to Paris, my adopted home, which has been both a necessary and essential balm for my soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paris Je t\u2019aime can be purchased by visiting Turnley\u2019s website.<\/a><\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> Photographs by Peter Turnley <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Caf\u00e9 de Flore, Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s, 2022. Photographer Peter Turnley arrived in Paris in 1975 aged 20. Since then he…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":446960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,161746,1033,171,32211,3715,205658,32912,40571,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-446959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-blackandwhitephotography","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-leica","14":"tag-paris","15":"tag-peterturnley","16":"tag-photojournalism","17":"tag-streetphotography","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115719279026609580","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}