The photographs are inspired by the world-famous French photographer Eugène Atget and the book is modeled after Walker Evans's famous book, 'American Photographs', published in 1938 by MOMA and considered one of the most important photo books published during the last century. Since Atget, no one has rendered Paris like Mike Kolster does in his photographs. Paris Park Photographs features spectacular images from a dozen public parks and gardens in and near France's capital city. Exploring many of the same places that photographer Eugène Atget (1857 1927) made famous a century ago, Michael Kolster references the pleasures and pitfalls of wandering alone amongst trees and plants and sculpture, unkempt and formally designed places, tempered by the knowledge that the modern world with all its congestion is only a few short steps away. These intimate yet inherently expansive views of Paris's parks invite closer scrutiny of the encounters awaiting us at the edges of the well-worn paths defining our daily lives. Few people venture into the frame of Kolster's photographs, but the promise of a renewed sense of hope and community resides in the details of his visual encounters and the moments of his heightened attention. Each picture speaks to us as a moment in time, even as the sequence suggests a choreography of place, one that can vary daily along with the changing moods and light of each park. Paris Park Photographs is presented in a bilingual English/French edition and concludes with an afterword by Michelle Kuo. Of note is how the book's design is inspired by Walker Evans's 1938 classic work, American Photographs, making Kolster's book of immediate interest to photo and book collectors. AUTHORS: Michael Kolster is a professor of art at Bowdoin College and a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography. His photographs have been exhibited widely and are in numerous collections, including the American University of Paris, Brown University, Center for Creative Photography, George Eastman House of Film and Photography, High Museum of Art, Huntington Library, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Princeton University Art Museum Smith College Museum of Art, and Williams College Museum of Art. His previous books are Take Me to the River: Photographs of Atlantic Rivers (2016) and L.A. River (2019). Michelle Kuo is a writer, attorney, and currently an associate professor in the History, Law, and Society program at the American University of Paris. She is the author of Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (2017), which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Prize.