Louis Stettner, a photographer who explored the streets of the two cities he called his “spiritual mothers,” New York and Paris, recording the daily lives of ordinary people, died on Thursday at his home in Saint-Ouen, France. He was 93.

His death was announced by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Mr. Stettner, a New Yorker, was a product of the Photo League and its emphasis on socially conscious, documentary work, exemplified by members and supporters like Weegee, Berenice Abbott and Robert Frank.

“I have never been interested in photographs based solely on aesthetics, divorced from reality,” he wrote in his photo collection “Wisdom Cries Out in the Streets,” published in 1999. “I also doubt very much whether this is possible.”

While living in Paris after World War II, he also found inspiration in a new wave of French photographers, including Robert Doisneau, Brassaï and Henri Cartier-Bresson, whose outlook seemed to dovetail with the league’s.