Three Men Sitting on Steps at the Seine, Paris

A former doctoral student of art history in her native Frankfurt, Ilse Bing learned to photograph on her own and established herself as a leading photographer in Paris in the 1930s, contributing fashion, architecture, and social documentary images to emerging French picture magazines. Bing’s facility with a small, handheld camera eventually earned her the title Queen of the Leica, and she documented Parisian streets and inhabitants with furtive speed and at unexpected angles. The noted New York dealer Julien Levy introduced Bing’s work, including several views of Paris (possibly including this one), to an American audience in his landmark 1932 exhibition, Modern European Photography: Twenty Photographers. Here the skewed viewpoint and cropping change the scene from an urban idyll to a more dynamic slice of the city.