Culture

Picturing 100 Years of Life Aboard the Paris Métro

A new photography book captures the cultures that collide underground.
Place Monge, 1987Dolorès Marat, © Courtesy Dolorès Marat & Galerie Françoise Besson–326, 332

The construction of the Paris Métro, in 1900, coincided with the spark and spread of photography, which emerged halfway through the previous century. A new book, Paris Métro Photo ($55 from Actes Sud), couples the two to track 100 years of life and culture below Paris’s streets.

The volume holds 250 images snapped over the last 100 years, from architectural and street photography to fashion shoots, and spans work by Robert Doisneau, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, and Robert Capa, among others.