充满争议的《吻》仍然可能价值1万英镑(图)

　　The heroine of Robert Doisneau's Baiser de l'H?tel de Ville, the archetypal photograph of Paris's most archetypal open-air activity, has decided to sell her original print at auction half a century after it was taken.

　　Fran?oise Bornet, a former actor who performed the kiss with her real-life then boyfriend, Jacques Carteaud, 55 years ago, said the print, which bears the photographer's stamp, would go under the hammer on August 25.

　　She said Doisneau, who died in 1994, had sent it to her a few days after taking the photograph as part of an assignment for America's Life magazine, which had asked him for pictures of young lovers in Paris.

　　The picture of a young, tousle-haired man planting a kiss on the lips of a slender girl became a global symbol of Paris romance in 1986, when it came out as a poster, selling 410,000 copies in the next five years.

　　Le Baiser (The Kiss) was thought to have been unposed until another couple, Jean and Denise Lavergne, told the magazine L'Express in 1992 that they were its unwitting subjects and that they now wanted compensation.

　　Doisneau was forced to reveal that the picture had been posed: he had seen the young couple kissing passionately in a cafe, and they had agreed to return later for the shoot.

　　Ms Bornet and Ms Lavergne both subsequently sued Doisneau, and each other, both claiming to be the woman in the photo and both demanding a share in its substantial worldwide earnings.

　　A Paris court threw the cases out in 1993, ruling that a kiss was just a kiss and that 40 years on, Le Baiser "could not offer positive proof of identification".

　　Ms Bornet, who in 1950 was studying acting at a Paris drama school with Corteaud, never received any royalties from the reproduction, whose rights are owned by the Rapho agency, Doisneau's employer when he took the picture.

　　She can now hope to make between ?10,200 to ?13,700 from the sale of her sought-after original, a spokesman for Artcurial auction house said.

　　The former actor, now 75, revealed, rather disappointingly, that she and her student boyfriend - who became a winemaker in southern France and died last year - were lovers for only eight or nine months.

　　Despite being eternally linked by one of the world's best-known photos, they did not stay in touch after they split up, beyond a brief phone call some years ago.

　　"I now think of it as a picture that should never really have existed," Ms Bornet told French media yesterday. "That's why I'm getting rid of it."

　　She added, perhaps wistfully: "The photo was posed. But the kiss was real."