Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville

A young couple kisses right in the middle of a bustling Paris sidewalk, wrapped up in each other while strangers stream past in a blur. This is Robert Doisneau's "Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville," or "The Kiss by the Town Hall," a black and white photograph he made in 1950 for Life magazine, which had asked him to capture romance in the French capital. The grand building rising behind them and the fuzzy figures on either side turn the two lovers into a calm anchor at the heart of all the motion. A man in a beret glances over as he walks by, adding to the sense that the whole city is spinning around them.

For years, admirers assumed Doisneau had stumbled onto a perfect stolen moment of real passion. That story unraveled in the 1990s during a lawsuit, when he confessed the couple were actors he had noticed nearby and asked to pose. A few fans felt let down by the news, but the picture never lost its pull. Doisneau built his reputation on street photography that found tenderness and playfulness in ordinary Parisian life, and staged or not, this image still says something true about being young, in love, and swept up in a great city.