Le Baiser de l'Hotel de Ville (section)

A couple kisses right in the flow of a busy Paris sidewalk, wrapped up in each other while pedestrians, a man in a beret, and a passing car go about their ordinary business. Robert Doisneau made this photograph in 1950 near the Hotel de Ville, the city's grand town hall, and it went on to become one of the best known romantic images in the world. Printed on posters and postcards for decades, the black and white scene came to stand for young love and for Paris itself.

The backstory holds a fun surprise. People long assumed Doisneau simply got lucky and caught a real couple in a stolen moment. Then in the 1990s a pair sued him, insisting they were the ones in the picture, and the truth spilled out. The kiss was set up. Doisneau had hired two young actors and asked them to embrace while he framed the shot. He worked in the documentary tradition of his day, but he clearly had no problem staging a scene to get exactly the picture he pictured in his head.

Finding out it was posed does not spoil the magic. The image still says something honest about being young and in love in a city full of movement, and that simple feeling keeps drawing people back to it more than seventy years on.