Some of the persons in the portraits are recognizable; among them are celebrities living and dead, some named and some nameless. Basketball player Tony Parker's portrait appears as well as that of Marilyn Monroe. Three French film stars, Lætitia Casta, Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci, share a triptych. Pierre-Auguste Renoir's wife and model Aline Charigot, Alphonsine Fournaise, the actress Angèle and the Impressionist painter Gustave Caillebotte populate a four-panel polyptych. The Chevalier de Saint George, an 18th century composer and equestrian, appears, as well as the Lady of the Unicorn from the medieval tapestry. Portraits of Agnès Sorel, mistress of French King Charles VII, and Madame Tallien, la plus grande putain de Paris, grace these pages. Superman's here too, appearing as Brandon Routh, and so is the late Jean Gabin. Everyone is free to guess who's who.

The photographer comments, "What is intriguing about Metro Portraits is that I don't know who a lot of the people are, but from time to time I identify somebody. So I am a participant in the game as much as my readers are. I also like the idea that they are pictures of pictures--art imitating art. Or, rather, the photographer deconstructing advertising posters whose purpose is to convince people to spend money and reconstructing them into art whose purpose is only beauty."

Finally, I like the idea that the posters in the Metro were ephemeral, since they are stripped down and destroyed after only a couple of weeks. So I may be the only person who ever the portraits that appear in this book.