Pont des Arts

Like a seduction, night in Paris falls slowly. An excellent seducer, she draws out the pleasure for as long as possible. Twilight here can last for hours. It is called l'heure bleu and is a magic time for photographers and painters and lovers and in the summer the smell of flowers is strongest at this time of transition from day to night. Paris often overwhelms me and sometimes, like tonight, I choose to just walk along the Seine with my thoughts. I cross from the apartment on rue Maître Albert to a set of old stone steps that lead down to the river. Notre Dame seems to rise and become more majestic as I descend to the river. Here, down by the water it is quiet with only an occasional solitary walker or a couple embracing on one of the concrete benches. I am alone with my thoughts.

I don't know how far I'll walk tonight, I am at ease and happy to be here. There is an air of mystery as I walk under the bridges – Pont au Double, Petit Pont, Pont St Michel. At street level I would be in the scene but down here I can reflect on it, hearing the music from the piano bar at Petit Pont, picturing the terrasse of Le Départ. There is a peace to it that envelopes me. It is not quite dark yet and the sky is a deep luminous blue that I have only ever seen here in Paris. The large iron mooring rings set into the ancient walls seem to invite me to tie up here and never leave.

Before I know it it is past midnight and I am beyond Pont Neuf, facing one of the most romantic spots in Paris – the Pont des Arts. It is a wooden foot bridge across the Seine connecting the Louvre to the Académie Française, kind of a connection between art and logic. Even at midnight there is still some reluctant light in the sky and I can see clouds behind the couple on the bridge. I stop here and take my first, and my last picture of the night.

Rue Perdue

Rue Maître Albert, on 16^th century maps of Paris, was named rue Perdue – the lost street. It starts at Quai de Montebello, just across the Seine from the Rose Window of Notre Dame. At its foot it sneaks out onto Place Maubert through a narrow opening between an Asian grocery store and an English beer pub. It is a very narrow street and it has a dogleg bend by the pizzeria.

Walking home at night along boulevard St Germain is a 21^st century experience, full of lights and people and sound until I get to this bend in my street, it here that I live when I am in Paris, and then it suddenly becomes a 16^th century experience. Very little light penetrates beyond this bend and it is as if the sound track of a movie has suddenly gone silent to focus your attention on the scene before your eyes. The buildings lean in toward the center of the street and I can almost imagine Quasimodo and Esmeralda, hand in hand, walking along in front of me towards Notre Dame. From time to time there is a flicker of light from the end of the street as the Bateau Mouche, invisible below the stone wall of the quai illuminates Notre Dame and the shadows of the trees seem to march along like phantoms in the night.

Paris is full of phantoms. Victor Hugo must have known this street, it is between his home on Place des Voges and the Sorbonne. I feel these presences everywhere in Paris. Her cobblestone streets bear their footprints, her walls brushed by their shoulders in passing. I stop for a second at the entrance to my street, hoping no doubt to extend my day by a second or two and think about the history of Paris. There in front of me are two people, lovers I hope, deciding between romance or a meal. It is an impossible shot, there is not enough light but I take it anyway and Paris smiles on me again.

Le Départ

It's a bitter cold morning, I can feel it through the 3 foot thick walls of the 500 year old building I'm sleeping in. My window looks out on a courtyard and I see it is still dark. I'm awake and I want some find some early morning pictures along the Seine. By the time I get dressed it is light, or at least it is trying to be through a gray drizzle. I walk along the Seine for a while, down by the water until my fingers get numb and I need to change film in my camera. Le Départ is a café at Place St. Michel. If you go in the front door and walk to your left around the cashier's station there is a service bar where you can stand and have an espresso or a croissant. The espresso is hot and strong but tiny so I have two. When my fingers are warm enough I change the film in my camera. I only get 10 exposures on a roll of film.

After I've warmed up a bit I look out into the café and remember the scores of times my day has ended here for a last drink. It is a place that sees my desire to be out and around in the early morning and my reluctance to end the day. It is a meeting place as well. I've often sat here on the terrace watching the people go in and out of the Métro, waiting for a friend to show up for a drink and some conversation.

Warm now, I go back out to see if Paris is going to talk to me this morning. Sometimes she says: “Hey look here.” and I come home with a wonderful image. Sometimes I just come home with numb fingers but Le Départ is always here to hello or good bye.

Up and Around in Paris

Sometimes we just stop seeing things. The iconic images of Paris, after more than two decades of familiarity, just blend in and become invisible. A few years ago the daughter of a friend would be coming to Paris as part of a trip to Europe between semesters. Could I meet with this young college student and give her a few tips to make her stay in Paris more interesting? Of course – I would love to!

Suddenly I needed to think about those iconic images of Paris and prepare to spend a few days as a guide. Little did I suspect how wonderful this experience would be for me. Proust once wrote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes.” My young friend gave me new eyes to see Paris with and helped me to feel once again the passion of a first love for this incredible city.

Seeing the sheer pleasure in her face of experiences that had become mundane to me made these things new and fresh. The Eiffel Tower became new to me as I made the trip to the top on a bitter cold and windy night. I had been too sophisticated to have done this before, not for me the usual tourist activities, yet the excitement in her eyes awoke in me a new feeling of discovery. This became my first true experience of a grand monument. At the top my young friend called home and had her mother logon to an Internet site with a live camera on the tower. I could only marvel at the miracle of their animated conversation.

It was like that for days – I was seeing Paris, my city, with new eyes. In all my images of Paris only this one offers a view of the Eiffel Tower. Every time I see this image I am reminded of Proust's quote and the new eyes that were an unexpected gift.

Fragments of Paris

Paris has many faces and each is like a pretty girl, you see her instantly in a crowd, just a glimpse of a profile disappearing around a corner forever but soon replaced by the next pretty girl. Each face, each image I make of Paris is a fragment of a city that can never be seen whole, your Paris and mine will be forever different.
Here is a fragment of my Paris -Place Dauphine. We are on Cité, an island in the Seine. Square du Vert Galant – 100 yards away – is a more popular location with its view of Pont des Arts and the Batteaux Mouches, but it is quiet and I prefer it here. I rarely see a tourist and it can be difficult to tell what time it is. The car says 1935, the buildings could be centuries old, and the bus in the background says today but you don't need to see the bus. You can sit on a bench and for a few minutes be in the 1930's. There are several very old restaurants, half below street level with heavy wooden furnishings and low ceilings. If you half close your eyes you can sometimes see Inspector Maigret strolling aimlessly in the park thinking about a case.

This is how my Paris came to be - piece by piece from 11,000 fragments that color my dreams. The greatest virtue of fragments is the space between them. Mine don't fully describe Paris, they leave holes for you to fill in with your imagination and your experiences. You can meet your own Paris in the spaces between these fragments and maybe someday we can meet, you and I, in a café. We'll drink a glass of wine and talk of Paris, yours and mine.

More than time, night is a place

As night falls in Paris a great change takes place. Imagine a young girl, busy by day at work. As night falls she changes from her normal working clothes into a simple black dress with bare shoulders and a diamond necklace. Paris becomes a different place the way that girl becomes a different girl. Paris takes on deep shadows at night and her lights, like diamonds, pull your eyes towards new mysteries.

While night is young much is still happening. In winter the darkness falls quite early and people are still finishing their days. It is a perfect time to sit in the window at Le Vieux Columbier on rue de Rennes and watch them. There are girls on bicycles stopped at the traffic light, even in the rain. People carry all sorts of packages, some even struggle onto the bus with them and no one seems to mind. The métro stops here, the 4 Line between the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse, your choice. The métro steadily swallows up one set of people and exhales another like an underground dragon asleep in its lair.

By midnight the change is complete. These chairs are outside a café, Le Notre Dame, where rue du Petit Pont becomes rue St Jacques at the edge of the Seine. Its hard to imagine and even harder to describe the quality of the silence here. It is a full rather than an empty silence, it lurks behind the occasional sound of a passing car or the escaping of a few notes now and then from the piano bar across the street. This is a perfect spot for that last drink which serves no purpose but to extend the night. From time to time a quiet figure will come or go out, late night revelers and early birds crossing paths without a nod. It's a private world at night.

* The title of this post is from the essay “Night Light: Brassai and Weegee” by Colin Westerbeck

Dancing in the Streets

Paris is made for letting go, for expressing yourself, for dancing in the streets.

On a sunny Sunday morning near a sculpture garden along the Seine behind Notre Dame one can find a gathering of music makers and dancers of all sorts. These are neither beggars nor indigents. Their music has a professional quality and they are here out of love, for the joy of just being in Paris. There are no money cups for tossing coins.

Some are in groups, just talking about their instruments, playing riffs or catching up with old friends and making new ones. Some, like the dancer in black, are alone in a world apart.

Paris doesn't mind being watched, she is quite vain about her beauty but she gives back the most, becomes more sensual when you touch her. The watchers behind our dancer are tolerated but not loved. Our dancer has eyes for Paris alone and does not see or sense the watchers or for that matter me with my camera. To feel Paris you have to dance with her, to join in. Some dance with panache, showing off. Some dance quietly gazing into the eyes of a loved one building on the tradition of the city of love.

I, too, dance with Paris in my own way capturing her image. I keep it close close to me as a soldier keeps an image of his sweetheart close, reminding him of what he has to come home to.

Rainy Days in Paris

Paris is a northern city and in the wintertime the sun does not get very high in the sky. The oblique light combined with the steel gray skies of winter gives Paris a look that would invoke a melancholy mood if it were not for her beauty. This wonderful quality is even better just after a rainfall when the streets are wet and glistening and the sun is coming directly at you, silhouetting the forms of people and objects and creating shadows on the cobblestones. It even has a name – contre-jour, against the light.

This effect is more pronounced, more evident, more vivid on the older streets in Paris. Here is a woman walking, moments after the rain has stopped falling. The sun is in her eyes and she is walking slowly now, perhaps enjoying as I am the play of the light on the cobblestones. We are on rue des Fossées St Jacques in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Paris located alongside the Pantheon. The street is named after the protective wall built by Philippe Auguste in 1360 to protect the city. You can still see parts of this wall just down the street near Place de la Contrescarpe.

This is a quiet street and I often walk along it in the early morning when my only company is the street sweepers with their green brooms. When I am not in Paris and dreaming about being there, this is the scene I picture. There is something about the umbrella that grabs my imagination. I suspect I am not alone in this feeling. Does it grab your imagination as well? What do you suppose it is about umbrellas in Paris?