The Soul of Paris

Lately I’ve been observing Parisian folk against the backdrop of their city and notice how commanding a role a single character can play within a photographic frame, revealing the city's rhythm, its energy, its soul. I've always believed you can capture the heart of a place in the quiet and often overlooked details,... I'm now exploring how the beat of that heart springs from the people among all those big and small details.

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Behind Panes of Glass

A man looking out of an open window never sees as much as the same man looking directly at a closed window. There is no object more deeply mysterious, no object more pregnant with suggestion, more insidiously sinister, in short more truly dazzling than a window lit up from within by even a single candle. What we can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what we can perceive taking place behind a pane of windowglass. In that pit, in that blackness or brightness, life is being lived, life is suffering, life is dreaming....  - Charles Baudelaire, Windows

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A Sunny Springlike Sunday in Montmartre

On this splendid morning an awakened Spring called Paris out of its sleepy winter slumber, and convinced us the seasons were finally shifting toward sunnier warmer days...

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Cafe St. Regis + On Dining Solo

I met a lovely lady the other day that mentioned how she's slowly eating her way through Paris, indulging in two-three-sometimes four course meals at restaurants on her days off, always with a glass of wine and sometimes a flute of champagne. Commonplace in Paris perhaps, but what surprised me about her rather extravagant lunchtime ritual is she's enjoying it as a solo diner... which made me wonder, can dining alone be as pleasurable and rich an experience as when there's company? Does it paint a lonely picture or a romantic one? Does it matter what anyone thinks when it gives you great pleasure? And when company is simply unavailable, is there a choice?

The other morning I stopped at Cafe St. Regis on the Ile Saint-Louis and had a full breakfast, which I counted as progress from my going to a café alone for just a coffee or hot chocolate and viennoiserie. It was a perfect place to try and dine solo, mainly because it was familiar and this lovely bistro has great food (the meal above was from lunch with my family a few months back), the service is friendly and the atmosphere is warm and welcoming. As a first go, I found the experience enriching...   

How about you, do/would you enjoy going out and having a meal solo? 

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Maman's Paris

I was recently asked how I see Paris as a mother,… and I thought the best way to answer is through photographs. A few images for now that begin to scrape the surface of an evolving answer. I see a city that I thought I knew so well unfold before me from a three foot high perspective of wide-eyed wonder and punctuated play. Faded into the background is the Paris soaking in my sentimentalities, it becomes instead a jungle of extraordinary play spaces and boundless immediacy.

What my boys allow me to see is far more than what I see without them. I feel so very fortunate to be able to capture these magical vanishing moments of them against the timeless backdrop of Paris...

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This post is dedicated to my beloved brother Paul [#leica]

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