The Woman Behind the Most Famous Kiss Photo in History Dies at 93

She is in one of the most famous photos ever taken. From one kiss. In Paris. Françoise Bornet has died at the age of 93.

She was sitting in a cafe in Paris with her boyfriend. They kissed each other. She was 20, a student and in love. And then the American photographer Robert Doisneau walked by. He grabbed his camera and so began the fairy tale of the most famous ‘kiss photo’ ever made.

Françoise Bornet studied at the Art Academy in Paris. In the spring of 1950 she went for a drink in a café with her lover Jacques Carteaux. “We kissed each other. And Robert Doisneau was also in that café. He then asked if he could photograph us.”

Doisneau had been sent to make a photo report about Paris. He saw Bornet and Carteaux and asked them to pose. They agreed and walked out. “It was not spontaneous,” Bornet said later. The two Parisians walked past the city hall, kissed and Doisneau took photos. They walked further down the street, Rue de Rivoli, kissed and Doisneau took more photos.

Oblivion

In June 1950, one selected photo appeared in the prestigious Life magazine. It was the one taken in front of the Paris City Hall that seemed to have been taken as a ‘snapshot’. As if Doisneau was sitting on a terrace while people walked by, and as if he happened to catch the couple in front of his camera.

The photo made little impression at the time and fell into oblivion. The following week, Life simply published a new issue with different photos. And the love didn’t last either. Bornet and Carteaux separated.

Only from the 1980s, when photography gained more international prestige, did Doisneau’s Parisian kiss reappear. It became an iconic photo. It was Paris in its glory days. It was romance in one click. Posters and postcards with the photo appeared. The Kiss appeared on shower curtains and coffee mugs.

The Parisienne who posed for the world’s most famous kiss photo continued to live a happy life in Paris, appearing in fifteen films and fifteen plays and marrying a filmmaker. © Robert Doisneau, Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Furious

And then there were also couples in love smoking money. In the early 1990s, the Lavergne couple went to court. They were in that photo of Robert Doisneau, they said, and they wanted to see money. And that was against Françoise Bornet’s sore leg. “I was furious that they dared to say that they were in the photo. They wanted to take a beautiful and personal memory from me.”

She went public for the first time in over forty years. She said that she was photographed with Carteaux in 1950 and that she was never paid. Trials followed, the Lavergnes had to bite the dust, but Bornet also came off badly. “The court decided that I was an extra, that I was barely visible in the photo. I wasn’t entitled to anything.”

Doisneau died and Bornet decided to sell the original print she had received from him in 2005 – as the only ‘reward’ for her posing work. The photo was auctioned and an anonymous Swiss paid 155,000 euros for it.

The Parisienne who posed for the world’s most famous kiss photo continued to live a happy life in Paris, appearing in fifteen films and fifteen plays and marrying a filmmaker. After her husband’s death, she moved to Évreux in Normandy, close to family. She died at home on Christmas Day, at the age of 93.

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2024-01-04 11:23:36


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