In early 1946, photographer Ed Clark journeyed to Paris (“the grand courtesan of all cities,” LIFE called the ancient town) to record the look and the feel of the French capital less than a year after the end of the Second World War. The pictures he made there chronicle not the cheerful, bawdy Paris of the popular imagination, but a place that, as LIFE told its readers, was a “grim and depressing disappointment” for any visitors expecting the Paris of Maxim’s, the Ritz, The Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge and the city’s other legendary, libidinous diversions.
The Parisians themselves, meanwhile, were “cold, hungry, confused and tired—above all, tired—too busy keeping themselves alive to bother much about entertaining. . . . [The typical American GI in Paris at the time] felt cheated. Where was the Paris he had heard about? Where were the naked women?”
The Paris [of Clark’s photos] is the Paris of the Parisians—and of anyone else who will take her. She is unadorned, somber and beautiful. Most of the pictures were taken in mist or rain, when the sharp, clean lines of the city’s spires and the bridges pierce through a curtain of gray. This is the Paris that neither Germans nor GIs could change. Even in the age of the atom bomb, she is as indestructible as the river.
For his part, like countless travelers before him through the centuries, Ed Clark fell under the spell cast by the great, gorgeous city. In fact, the Tennessee native once claimed that, at the time he got the assignment, “I didn’t know where France was, let alone Paris.”
But when he came upon a young painter in Montmartre (slide #6 in this gallery—Clark’s own favorite photo from his entire career), he found it “so beautiful that I just started shooting.”
March 13, 2012. Unemployed Indians hand in their forms to register at the Employment Exchange Office in Allahabad, India.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesView along Quai du Louvre (today Quai François Mitterrand) down the Seine toward Ponte Des Arts with the Eiffel Tower in the distance, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesView of the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesA barge churns up the Seine past Notre Dame on a gloomy winter day in 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesA man exits a Paris Metro station, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesThe Arc de Triomphe, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesA young artist paints Sacré-Coeur from the ancient Rue Norvins in Montmartre, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesMoulin de la Galette, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesParis' famed stalls along the Seine, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesView across the Pont Alexandre III bridge toward the Grand Palace, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesA small sister of the Statue of Liberty beside the Seine, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesParis street scene, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNear the Pont Neuf steps, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesScene on the Seine, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesParisian flower vendor on the banks of the Seine, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesPont Alexandre III bridge, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesConciergerie, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesRowboats on the banks of the Seine, Paris, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesView of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Coeur, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesMontmartre cemetery, Paris, winter 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesPasserelle Debilly bridge on a foggy winter day with the Eiffel Tower in the background, 1946.Ed Clark—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
