Book Review | Yvon's Paris: Beautiful images of Paris

Yvon’s Paris

Robert Stevens £30

If the name Pierre Yves Petit doesn’t mean much to you, then the beautiful images of Paris captured on film by this early 20th-century photographic pioneer – he was otherwise known as Yvon – should certainly ring a few bells.

You may recognise some of his distinctive works from your own travels around the Parisian side streets – you may even have unwittingly bought some of his works on a French postcard from an old bookstore or roadside kiosk – but the Paris he loved, a capital city of working boatmen on the Seine, of eerily snapped gargoyles in the soft morning light or post-rainstorm tranquillity, of empty parks at dusk and flower sellers on the city’s bridges, is perhaps harder to find in these days of 24-hour hubbub.

Thank goodness, then, for this beautiful and unique collection of over 100 duotone images collated by Robert Stevens, a lecturer in photographic history at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

The works that Yvon initially presented on postcards are eagerly sought by collectors today, but instead why not adorn your coffee table with this sumptuous tome instead – the pictures are shown at a luxurious size in all their glory and rich detail.