Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1924 to parents of Jewish descent. He emigrated to the United States two years after World War II ended, and since then he has produced work that changed the history of art and photography. Groundbreaking projects include The Americans, Lines of My Hand, Thank you, Black White and Things, Pull My Daisy and Cocksucker Blues. Frank was the subject of a major traveling exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1994. He was awarded the Hasselblad Award for photography in 1996. Robert Frank was born in Zurich in 1924 to parents of Jewish descent. He emigrated to the United States two years after World War II ended, and since then he has produced work that changed the history of art and photography. Groundbreaking projects include The Americans, Lines of My Hand, Thank you, Black White and Things, Pull My Daisy and Cocksucker Blues. Frank was the subject of a major traveling exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. in 1994. He was awarded the Hasselblad Award for photography in 1996. "Ute Eskildsen is chief curator for photography at Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany. She has curated many exhibitions and written numerous books."

The publication of Paris marks the first time that the significant body of photographs which Robert Frank made in Paris in the early 1950s have been brought together in a single book. Having left Switzerland in 1924, this 1951 trip to France was only Frank's second return to Europe after he had settled in New York City in 1947, and some of the images he made during that visit have become iconic in the history of the medium. The 80 photographs reproduced here, which were selected by Frank and editor Ute Eskildsen, suggest that Frank's experience of the "new world" had sharpened his eye for European urbanism. He saw the city's streets as a stage for human activity and focused particularly on the flower sellers. His work clearly references Atget and invokes the tradition of the flaneur.