Kiss picture by Robert Doisneau: Parisian model Françoise Bornet is dead | Life & Knowledge

2024-01-04 16:04:42

The passionate scene hung as a poster on thousands of room walls and made many dream of eternal love.

A young couple kisses on the street as passers-by stroll past them. The legendary photo “Kiss at the Town Hall” became a symbol of Paris as a city of love. Now Françoise Bornet, who posed with her lover for the photographer Robert Doisneau (1912-1994) in the spring of 1950, has died at the age of 93.

The kiss was just staged

The young Doisneau had been scouting for subjects near the Invalides when a young couple walked past and kissed. He asked the two young acting students Françoise Bornet and Jacques Carteaud to repeat the kiss in front of the facade of the town hall. “He captured five or six poses. It lasted about half a day,” Bornet recalled.

Françoise Bornet in 2005 in front of the Paris City Hall, where the famous photo was taken in 1950

Photo: Philippe Wojazer/REUTERS

First sale fetched 155,000 euros at auction

A few days after it was taken, Doisneau sent the photo to the young woman as a souvenir. On the spine the photographer’s stamp and the number of the negative, 21,039. In 2005, Françoise Bornet auctioned the first print for 155,000 euros. The photo that Doisneau took on behalf of Time magazine was now world famous.

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“Le Baiser de l’Hotel de Ville” was printed as a postcard and sold as a poster more than 400,000 times. In addition, the motif for the “Love for the Games” campaign, with which Paris applied to host the 2012 Olympic Games, was reintroduced. However, the story did not have a happy ending for the young couple. Bornet and Carteaud separated shortly afterwards, and Bornet married another man.

Françoise Bornet with her husband at the auction of the first print, which raised 155,000 euros.

Photo: IMAGO/ABACAPRESS

And: there was even a real scandal surrounding the kiss photo. In 1992, a couple claimed on French television that they were the lovers in the photo. This televised confession lured Françoise Bornet and her ex-partner Jacques Carteaud out of their reserve and forced Doisneau to reveal the secret of the “kiss” photo that had been kept for four decades.