The portraits in this collection were taken in the nineteen-seventies when I was living in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Included are pictures of friends and strangers, French and foreign, men, women and children. The unique feature of this book is that in addition to full-page portraits, there are many multiples: diptychs, triptychs and polyptychs. The multiples were made possible because the camera I was using, the revolutionary Olympus Pen-F single-lens reflex, permitted me to cock the shutter and advance the film in approximately two seconds. Consequently, I could shoot sequences of pictures almost as quickly as if I was using a motor drive or a movie camera. Many of the portraits in this collection were taken on the spur of the moment, à la sauvette , to use Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s expression. I was young at the time—not yet thirty years old—and was quite fearless. Sometimes I would saunter into a bistro and, if I spotted an attractive young woman, I would just start taking her picture without so much as a how-de-do or a bonjour! Other times, I would perambulate in the Luxembourg Gardens and, using the telephoto lens, shoot pictures from afar. Afterwards, I would strike up a conversation with the people I had photographed, promising prints of the portraits in exchange for an address or a telephone number. Some of the portraits of my friends were posed, usually in hotel rooms. My technique would be to engage in small talk with my subjects while shooting image after image while they remained as stiff as in a nineteenth-century Daguerreotype, encased in their invisible carapaces, until the ineffable moment would arrive when they would relax and lower their masks, revealing at last their true nature, and that would produce a perfect portrait. Often it meant burning up an entire roll of film to get that one portrait. Even though I may have forgotten some of the names of the people I photographed in Paris half a century ago, I have never forgotten their faces. I hope that some of the portraits in this collection may leave lasting memories and indelible impressions on you and leave you smiling, too.