Accident, New York, 1952

With his blurred backdrops and tenderness towards his human subjects, Louis Faurer was one of the United States’ most unashamedly poetic photographers before he died in 2001. An exhibition of his work is at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, until 18 December. All photographs: Louis Faurer estate, courtesy of Deborah Bell and Howard Greenberg Gallery

New York, 1949

Faurer was born to Polish immigrant parents in Philadelphia in 1916, and was employed by photography studios as a young man. He was a photographic technician for the army during the second world war

Eddie, New York, 1948

‘My earliest experience in art occurred at the Benjamin Rush public school,’ Faurer remembers. ‘Miss Duncan, who seemed to float on a rose petal scent, having requested that numbers be written on paper with lead pencil, was shocked when my sheet yielded a drawing of a locomotive.’ He also submitted drawings to Walt Disney aged 13, who invited him out to California. ‘It seemed unreachable and so I didn’t go,’ he said

Win, Place, and Show, 3rd Avenue El at 53rd Street, New York, c.1946-1948

Faurer began photographing for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Mademoiselle and Elle, sharing a studio in New York with Robert Frank

Champion, New York, 1950

‘I photographed almost daily and the hypnotic dusk light led me to Times Square.’ Several nights of taking photographs in that area and developing and printing in Robert Frank’s dark room became a way of life. He would say, ‘Whatta town’

Union Square from Ohrbach’s Window, New York, c.1948-1950

‘New York enchanted and amazed me,’ he said. ‘Everywhere a new discovery awaited me. Rejection slips from US Camera were transformed into reproduced pages. My work was being accepted; often it seemed unreal. I showed my photographs to Walker Evans. A handsome brass tea kettle in his tiny room in the offices at Fortune projected his stability and eloquence’

Deaf mute, New York, 1950

He continued to make personal photography alongside commercial commissions and moved to Europe in the late 60s

Untitled, New York, 1949

Come the mid-70s, he was back in New York. ‘I was overwhelmed by the change that had occurred here. I took to photographing the new New York with an enthusiasm almost equal to the beginning’

Unemployed and Looking at Rockefeller Center, New York, 1947

He also begins teaching at the likes of Yale and Parsons school of design

Staten Island Ferry, New York, 1946

‘I have an intense desire to record life as I see it, as I feel it,’ he said. ‘As long as I’m amazed and astonished, as long as I feel that events, messages, expressions and movements are all shot through with the miraculous, I’ll feel filled with the certainty I need to keep going. When that day comes, my doubts will vanish’

Market Street, Philadelphia, 1937 ‘

My eyes search for people who are grateful for life, people who forgive and whose doubts have been removed, who understand the truth, whose enduring spirit is bathed by such piercing white light as to provide their present and future hope’