WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA.- The Leica Gallery Los Angeles presents for the first time in Los Angeles the exhibition French Kiss from Paris based photographer Peter Turnley.

Peter Turnley, a prolific and award winning photojournalist, has also continually photographed the life of Paris, his adopted home. His tender, humorous, and sensual view of Paris, offers distinct contrast to the stark realities depicted in his photojournalism. He has photographed extensively the life of Paris these past forty years and is one of the preeminent photographers of the daily way of life in Paris of his generation. Turnley worked as an assistant to the famous French photographer Robert Doisneau and boasts the same printer as Henri Cartier-Bresson. In addition, Turnley has produced portraits and covered many of the modern world’s most influential people: Obama, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin, Mandela, Arafat, Schroeder, Ceausescu, Gaddafi, Chirac, Clinton, Reagan, Bush Sr., Lady Diana, and Pope Jean Paul II among others.

French Kiss - A Love Letter to Paris, Turnley’s new book was recently published in 2013. Peter will be signing his books French Kiss at the opening as well as teaching a street photography workshop at the Leica Gallery Los Angeles. Contact gallery for details.

Speaking of his body of work from French Kiss: Peter says, “This book is my love letter to Paris. It is an expression of my profound gratitude to this city and to the many people whose paths I have crossed here.”

A graduate of the University of Michigan, the Sorbonne of Paris, and the Instituts d'études politiques of Paris, Turnley has received honorary Doctorate degrees from the New School for Social Research in New York and St. Francis College of Indiana. He received a Neiman fellowship from Harvard for the academic year 2000- 2001.

Turnley’s photographs have been featured in Newsweek, Harper’s Bazaar, Stern, Paris Match, Geo, LIFE, National Geographic, The London Sunday Times, Le Figaro and Le Monde, New Yorker, and Doubletake. Turnley’s photographs have been published throughout the world and have won many international awards including the Overseas Press Club of America Award for Best Photographic Reporting from Abroad, numerous awards and citations from World Press Photo, and the University of Missouri’s Pictures of the Year International competition.

He presently lives in Paris and New York, and has previously published five books of his work: Beijing Spring, Moments of Revolution, In Times of War and Peace, Parisians, and McClellan Street.