Sunday Morning Inspiration – Paris in Black and White

In early 1946, photographer Ed Clark journeyed to Paris to record the look and the feel of the French capital less than a year after the end of World War II. The pictures he made there chronicle not the cheerful, bawdy Paris of the popular imagination, but a place that was a “grim and depressing disappointment” for any visitors expecting the Paris of Maxim’s, the Ritz, the Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge and the city’s other legendary, libidinous diversions.

The Parisians themselves, meanwhile, were “cold, hungry, confused and tired above all, tired too busy keeping themselves alive to bother much about entertaining. The typical American GI in Paris at the time felt cheated. Where was the Paris he had heard about?

All photos (c) Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images