Liebe in Saint Germain des Prés

By Ed Van der Elsken, Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg, 1956. First German edition (published the same year in Amsterdam by De Bezige Bij). Non-paginated (approximately 115 pages). Black and white photographs. 27.6 x 19.9 cm. Condition: Good (tears on the top and bottom of the cover leaving some gaps. Excellent interior).

250€

This book looks like a photo novel whose subject will have been the Parisian years (1954-1957) of the Dutch photographer van der Elsken. Years spent on the « rive gauche » and in the district of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, cradle of existentialism. We therefore find the typical atmosphere of its places: cafes, jazz clubs, student restaurants… and the fauna that haunted them. This “love” in Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a true artistic postcard of a time when intellectuals, jazz musicians, artists, young people from La Sorbonne met on the boulevards, but van der Elsken reconstitutes especially an idea of the Parisian bohemian of the 50s.