le baiser de l’hôtel de ville sells for $242,000

I'm passionate about photography. This semester, I've spent one night a week in a darkroom and another night in a class where the professor spends 90% of the lecture telling war stories and the remaining 10% imparting useful information about photography. But I digress ...

Robert Doisneau is one of my favorite photographers. He was one of the most amazing documentary photographers ever. And, no, it doesn't bother me a bit that he staged some of the images, including the one at the right.

I came to his work through a poster of Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville (The Kiss at City Hall) several years ago and have since fallen in love with an amazing body of work. I was lucky enough to see over one hundred of his original prints last year, right before heading to Paris for what would be the first of two trips to France in 2004.

Anyhow, while at my photography class tonight, I learned something interesting. The woman in this photograph sold her original print last month for the equivalent of U.S. $242,000.

Adieu to a famous kiss, hello £105,000

The woman who in 1950 posed for Robert Doisneau’s celebrated photograph of a couple kissing in Paris sold her signed print last night for £105,000 — seven times the auction house estimate.

Françoise Bornet, 78, who posed for the picture that became known as Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville for Doisneau with a fellow drama student who was then her boyfriend, put her copy up for sale to raise funds for her husband to open a film production company. She had expected to make £15,000. The price paid by a Swiss collector who bid by phone reflects the power exerted by an image that has sold half a million posters in 20 years.

Bidding for the picture took off as soon as the auctioneer opened proceedings at £7,000. “The presence of the ‘lover of the Hôtel de Ville’ in the saleroom added to the magic,” said the auctioneer, Herve Poulain.

“We are really set up for the future now,” Mme Bornet said.

Doisneau took the picture on the Rue de Rivoli, by the City Hall, as part of a series on Paris for Life magazine. It was little known until 1984, when it was published as a poster.

Doisneau, who died in 1994, disclosed in 1992 that he had asked Mme Bornet and Jacques Carteaud to stage the kiss after seeing them cuddling in a café. Mme Bornet said: “He was probably trying to take a candid photo of lovers. But when he saw us he approached us and asked if we would agree to kiss again. We knew the photographer’s reputation and we leapt at the chance.”

Via timesonline.co.uk