Love on the Left Bank

Lens Culture... Love on the Left Bank - photographs by Ed van der Elsken. "...Artists, hipsters, bohemians, actors, dancers, jazz musicians, writers and poets in 1950s Paris lived a wildly romanticized life — much as their contemporaries in America, the Beatniks, were finding a wild new way to live after the second world war.
Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken was part of the scene in Paris at the time, and in 1956, he published a ground-breaking photobook called Love on the Left Bank. His gritty, sexy, black-and-white photos of bohemian life in Paris captured a reckless, carefree, decadent and hedonistic love for life. A fictional text and captions (corny, for sure), accompanied the photos in the book." More... Works by Ed van der Elsken at his personal site.