Seine in the morning

I have developed a fondness for Paris through direct experience of her beauty but beauty is superficial. To really know Paris you have to get inside, see beyond or perhaps behind facade. Once you do, then you can know what it means to love a city. Many before me have loved Paris and have photographed or painted her portrait or have written about her. Images and words are an artist's attempt to describe his own image of the world and if you can get people to see the world as you do, you have framed their subsequent encounters with that world. These images and writings are with me as I walk the streets of Paris. They are like captions or perhaps subtitles that inform and enrich the experience. As I walk along the Seine this morning, Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector Maigret, is responsible for many of my thoughts and emotions. Of his almost 200 novels it is the Maigret stories that run through my head. As Inspector Maigret solves his crimes he moves through Paris introducing me to cafés and bars, to things to eat (brandade de morue) and drink (eau-de-vie), to observations about the quartiers of Paris and the people who live in them, to ways of moving about the city in its buses, taxis, and back alleys. Like laminations, my experiences and his have joined to ignite in me a long love affair with Paris. Maigret worked just under the tower in this image. He could see across the Seine to the cafés of the Left Bank and Place St Michel. I stood here, letting the early morning sun burn the image deeper in my mind and my imagination. I will see it forever but I made this image to share it with you.