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Walking Through Paris on a Summer Evening
I rarely post photographs of Paris on social media. This is the most photographed city in the world, and it’s been photographed by the greatest photographers in the world, so there’s not much I could add to your sense of what the city looks like.
I also loathe the practice of taking endless photos of one’s life for consumption on Facebook. It puts everyone who does it at a remove from their own lives. Instead of seeing, hearing, smelling and experiencing what’s in front of them, they’re imagining how it would look through someone else’s eyes — usually, their ex-boyfriend’s. So I don’t do it. Susan Sontag wrote an essay, On Photography, decades before the advent of the cell phone and Instagram, but it seems even more pertinent now:
I think that sentence — “a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world” — is exactly right. That’s my objection. And I think she’s right, too, to say that taking photographs is a way of limiting your own experience, an effort somehow to reduce the extraordinary, messy, infinitely complex experience of seeing, of thinking, of feeling all of the wild and conflicting emotions involved in being alive — an attempt to take the sweet smell of honeysuckle on a summer evening mixed, always, under the Pont Neuf with the faint smell of urine; to take the way my shoe slightly scraped my right foot when I walked on the cobblestones; to take all of the bittersweet memories I have of the Rue Jacob; to take my memories of my grandparents, who walked down exactly the same streets when they were young, and my memories of walking down those same streets with them when they were no longer young; to take the feeling of catching a stranger’s eye, by accident, and the pleasure and the amusement and the mild embarrassment an accidental flirtation occasions; to take the feeling of the warm, moist, summer air on my skin; to take the sound of a clarinet — and reduce it all to a series of flat, two-dimensional images. Images that look just like billions of other photographs of Paris.
So why bother?
And I don’t want to bring the Evil Eye upon myself. Everyone knows Paris is beautiful. Everyone knows I live here, and that therefore I’m lucky. Showing photographs of the beautiful things I see here might not be seen as an invitation to share my life, but as an incitement to envy. The human imagination being what it is, people will see these and fill in the details with fantasy; they will assume my life is, in toto, as beautiful as Paris itself; and some will feel their own lives lacking in comparison to the perfect life they wrongly assume I enjoy. Why enjoin resentment? Why play with fire?
But I’ve made an exception today, as you’ll see. And I made an exception because yesterday evening was so startlingly lovely, so languidly magical, that something strange happened: Everyone in Paris stopped taking photos.
It was the first real summer evening we’ve had after a spring that never properly arrived, and it seemed as if the whole city was struck by the sudden realization that we all live in Paris, and that Paris is achingly beautiful — struck so acutely that everyone, for once, put their cameras away, and instead came out to ride their bikes, play on the jungle gym, play chess, or cards, or juggle, or sunbathe, or buy an ice-cream cone. At one traffic light, even, I heard the sound of a jazz clarinet blasting deliriously from a stopped car; I looked, and saw it was the driver himself playing the thing, with both hands. (I didn’t get a photo, of course. It happened too quickly, the angle was bad — and what good would a photo be? You had to hear it.)
The sight of so many people who weren’t looking at their phones was so unusual that I pulled out my own phone to show that it really happened. I wanted to show this, especially, to everyone who reads what I write here, because it seems sometimes that almost everything I write these days is about pain: Like all of us, every time I’ve looked at the news this week I’ve been shocked, and horrified. The headlines are full of murder, suffering, death. It is almost too much to bear.
Even though these photographs are so inadequate, even though they can’t even begin to capture the experience of walking through Paris yesterday evening, they’ll show something you won’t see in today’s headlines: happiness. It isn’t news — yet it happens, too. So come take a walk with me — as much as you can, in two dimensions — and remember that this, too, happens in the world.
Let me begin with two photos to ward off the Evil Eye. This is what I went out to buy, and buying this was my whole plan for Saturday night:
A box of milk, .64 euros. (How much does a box of milk cost in your neighborhood? And does it come in a box?)
But suddenly, when I stepped out, it hit me: It was a beautiful evening. Really beautiful. And so I decided to go for a walk. Here are some of the things I saw.
Let’s start, as I did, by looking in the shop windows — and at this lovely dress, which I covet:
I don’t covet these handbags; they’re not my style — they’re a bit old-ladyish — and the cats would destroy them, anyway. But I like knowing that Chanel still makes them, and that they look exactly the same as they did when my grandmother lived here:
And isn’t this necklace delightful? Isn’t this window beautiful? (And who buys necklaces like this? What do they wear them for?)
Here I was trying to take a photo of the orchids and the tea set, but I accidentally took a photo of myself. (You’ll see, soon, that I’m the only woman in all of these photos who’s staring at her phone. The realization that no one else was looking at their phones had only just hit me when I took this.)
I decided, then, to stroll through the bookstores. Paris still has thriving bookstores. I’m torn about this, because politically, I’m on Amazon’s side: If people want to buy their books from Amazon, I think they should be free to choose. But I do see why France wants to keep its bookstores. They’re essential to the city and its culture, and something would really be lost if they disappeared:
Paris also has thriving music stores, by the way:
And stores that sell things like this — and no, I don’t know what it is. (Calling @jlikeks.)
And it has flower stores, too, lovely ones, where the flowers are arranged with such care:
Here I decided, “Enough window shopping,” because I began to see things like this. (Are you hungry? You will be, soon enough.)
I bought this cake (or its ancestor), once. I brought it to a party. It was every bit as delicious as it looks. It’s got three different kinds of chocolate mousse in it, and two layers of thick chocolate cake, and those petals are made of pure chocolate. I have no idea how they make the petals like that. I’m just thankful that people who know how to make flower petals out of chocolate exist in this world:
Shellfish! And my feet. The foot on the right is the one that hurts a bit when I walk on cobblestones. They look like comfortable shoes, don’t they? But they don’t have enough arch support. I was almost too vain to post this, because the double-angle of the mirror makes my ankles look short and stumpy, but I decided it was sufficiently important for you to see the shellfish that I shouldn’t bother with my vanity.
This gentleman embodies everything I mean when I talk about charm. A photo can’t capture the way he entertains every customer, the way he flirts with all the ladies, the young and the very old alike; the immense pride he takes in his cheese, its origins in the terroir. He makes the experience of shopping for cheese a huge entertainment, a pleasure in its own right. Here he’s offering a customer a sample to taste:
I seem to be in this photo, too, as kind of a ghostly presence. I’m the ghost of the poire caramel, which I’m dying to try:
I’ve never tried these, and I have no idea what they are. But they’re so pretty, aren’t they? Lined up like schoolgirls waiting to be asked to dance:
This is not a desert! It’s goat cheese with figs, cinnamon, and nuts. To be honest, I don’t like goat cheese, so I include it in the show only because it’s so charming to look at:
The macaroon tower. (If I’d realized I was in the photo, I would have smiled. It definitely brought a smile to my soul.)
It’s cherry season — finally! But they’re still far too expensive. Almost ten euros a kilo. I was spoiled forever by cherry season in Istanbul, where I could buy so many at once that I made myself sick every single day of the season. So last night, I just admired them from afar:
I don’t yet know from personal experience, but I’ll bet you those strawberry things are as delicious as they look:
The chocolates on the upper right are like works of art. (I don’t know if I’d be able to eat them: I’d feel bad about eating a work of art.)
You’re missing the best part of this: The smell of fresh-baked bread. You can smell it half a block away:
By this point I was getting really hungry. I called my father to see if he wanted to join me for dinner, but alas he had already made plans. (My father, the social butterfly.)
I’m not sure what those drinks are, but I do know they’re really expensive. So I figured I’d skip the drink before dinner and have a nice, refreshing glass of tap water when I got home. Discipline, your name is Claire.
This is one of my favorite street corners in Paris. See how no one’s looking at their phone?
This little guy was too happy to sit still:
And so was I, so I changed my mind about sitting in a cafe. I wanted to keep walking. I stopped first to have a look at the booksellers’ stalls. (Look, it’s a biography of Napoleon! The books are much better value than the fruit: You could have that handsome biography of Napoleon for less than the price of a bag of cherries.)
Strictly speaking, this cover violates our Code of Conduct, but I’ll make an exception because I’d like it to be known that no, nothing in Paris has been censored; and yes, Paris is still Paris:
I think I’ll let these nekkid ladies slip past the CoC, too: They’re tasteful enough, right?
Speaking of nekkid ladies, I have to include a photo of this. This shop is proposing that ladies pay them to massage their breasts. Seriously.
I know, you’re still marvelling at that. But back to the booksellers. I wonder who buys these? I think it must be American tourists, right?
Now let’s go down and walk by the water. (Yes, he’s got his camera out, but that’s because he just bought a new motorcycle. That’s got to go to Facebook immediately, lest his ex-girlfriend miss the news.)
You can’t tell from the photo, but this little girl is just going nuts with excitement. She’s at that stage where all she wants to do is go to the park to go down the slide, and tonight, she got her wish:
This woman, on the other hand, is at that stage where all she wants to do is go to the park to lie in the hammock. And she got her wish, too.
Right about here is where I realized my shoe was bothering me. (If you know Paris’s geography, you realize these photos aren’t in order — but never mind that.)
You’re missing the unmistakable smell of urine under this bridge. I don’t know why it’s a Parisian tradition to pee under this bridge, but it most definitely is, and an ancient one:
I saw not one, but two weddings. (This couple came from China, I think, to have their wedding. Someone should have told them not to have it under that bridge.)
I reckon she’s thinking, “This is the happiest day of my life, but … what’s up with these Europeans, anyway?”
There are probably a billion photos of Notre Dame in the world. But I took one all the same:
Here’s wedding number two. (They’re locals. They knew to avoid that bridge.)
This gentleman is standing by to ensure that everyone’s photo of Paris by the Seine is a cliche. It’s his duty, and he executes it with care:
I was trying to catch the color or the balloons. He thought I was admiring him. It led to a bit of blushing:
The guy on the right is, maybe, taking a photo, but it’s hard to tell. Perhaps he’s doing yoga?
One day, everyone in this photo will be nostalgic when they think about this evening:
He was smiling at first, but when he realized I had my camera out, he suddenly decided he’d best look cool:
Ah, wait: She’s got her phone out. I just realized it when I looked more closely. Well, there’s an exception to every rule. It’s such a pretty dress that I’ll forgive her. (Bad sign for the rest of his evening, though.)
Check out her blue shoes!
Lovers by the Seine, and my shadow. In the hands of a better photographer, this would have been a better photo:
They were so intent that they didn’t even notice I was taking their photo:
Nope, not cellphones: They’re playing cards. The way people did before cellphones:
More nostalgia-in-prospect:
She brought a terrific-looking picnic to the Seine, where the picnic-tables are now open for the summer:
Spotted on the pavement:
She’s riding a Vélib, as every visitor in Paris would love to do — except that for some reason the system chokes on foreign credit cards, so tourists inevitably give up in frustration and disappointment. She’s a local, you can tell: She managed to rent a Vélib.
Here are a few street signs that caught my eye. “Here, the young Louis XIII was enthroned, an hour after the death of his father, Henry IV.” (Students of French: Note the use of the passé simple.)
Ici, la jeune Claire Berlinski prit un selfie, plusieurs années après Louis XIII fut intronisé. Owing to the gravity of the occasion, I did not smile.
I accidentally cut off the last letter of René Marie Alphonse Charles Capitant’s name. He was a prominent member of the Resistance:
I wasn’t sure whether to include this photo, since the subject of this post is happiness. But when I thought about leaving it out, it seemed wrong — as if I’d be forgetting them. This is the story behind it, and behind so many plaques like just like it, outside so many schools and playgrounds:
Pablo Picasso painted Guernica in this atelier, and Balzac’s novel, The Unknown Masterpiece, takes place in this building:
This is how French people are incubated: It’s a preschool. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
Charlemagne Street: King of the Francs, Emperor of the Occident.
What’s behind this mysterious door? I don’t know, but I suspect it is wonderful:
Summer begins officially in Paris when this guy shows up. (I think he flies south for the winter).
This gentleman was taking a quick birdbath in the fountain. By this point in the walk, I was feeling a bit warm, and I was tempted to do the same, but I reluctantly decided it would be unladylike:
Oh, since I’ve mentioned them before: This is one of those infernal unattended suitcases. Last night I saw one again. Can you tell me why this is just sitting there in the street? Does that look like common sense to you?
But let’s not close on that note: I walked past this church and peeked inside. This is what I saw:
And this is what I saw when I looked up:
And that was my evening. None of this can really show you what it was like, at all. it’s just a hint, a glimpse. But I wanted to try to show you something that will never be in the news — an evening, in Paris, so lovely that it made everyone put away their phones.
And to ward off the evil eye, I’ll close by returning to my normal life, to the whole point of this excursion:
That’s what I brought back with me: cat food, kitty litter, milk, and a sandwich. Mission accomplished.
Published in General
The Last of the Mohicans
Thank you for these pics Claire. It’s been ten years since my last trip to Paris, but these photos brought back beautiful memories of one of the last trips I had with my husband before he left this earth.
While I don’t think you’re right, I surely hope to be happily proven wrong. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were right?
I’m so glad they brought back those memories. Paris is a city of memories for me: From my childhood, when my father was a visiting professor here, to the year I spent here when I was eighteen, and the seven years I spent here in my 30s, and memories of my grandparents, and of course of all the happy times — and some sad — with my father, my brother, my friends, old flames; memories of books written and hearts broken and mended again; memories of every stage of my life. Every street is shot through with memories, redolent of nostalgia — a bittersweet feeling, one no photograph could capture.
I reckon people still have ways of marrying and reproducing — I hear young’uns use this Tinder thing — but I can’t imagine it’s as fun as the old way was.
What time does the sun go down in Paris at this time of year?
9:42 PM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBj7Fky1K_U
My recruiter said “We’ll feed you three times a day, beat you half as bad as your daddy, you’ll sleep in your own bed on clean white sheets, and pay you money to shoot machine guns all day for Uncle Sam.” But when I saw Paris, well I couldn’t look back.
Great photos, BTW, and thanks for the trip to the streets of Paris. I get what Sontag’s saying, but I also think there’s a bit of sniffing towards the boors in loud shirts who lumber around Europe taking holiday snaps with enormous cameras, lining everyone up for a shot they can show the Johnsons when they get back home. Sure, it’s proof they’d visited a famous place, not proof they’d experienced it beyond ticking off the locations that waterfall out of the gift-shop postcard portfolio. But as a damnation of travel photography in general . . . eh.
I take pictures on vacation to memorialize the beauty, freeze a moment, and of course to remind myself later that I was there. And to remember the things I would otherwise forget.
This old battered door . . .
. . . brings back a moment in Paris when we’d just left the Holocaust museum. There were two heavily-armed guards. A man was playing the piano beyond the door, something angular and nervous that might have come up with a melody if we’d stuck around long enough.
On my own, later in the day, I passed the old Grande Palais:
Both pictures – ordinary and sumptuous – remind me of what I experienced, and I’m glad I have them. Even if it makes Sontag sigh.
With thanks, Claire! I’m happy!
What I forget is to look at pictures.
9:43 pm.
(I love questions to which I can give a clear, unhedged reply.)
So glad! That was my intention.
Oh, wow — you’re another one of those photographers who has things like “focus” and “framing” down pat. Yeah, I’d probably do a lot more of it if I were actually good at it.
As for Sontag, I think you’re right: There’s a hint of that there. But she’s Sontag, what do you expect. I think the overall points she makes are well worth thinking about, especially in the straight-to-Instagram age.
Of course, it was her special punishment to fall in love, after writing that, with one of the greatest photographers of her generation. I imagine the conversation over the dinner table about that essay must have been interesting.
After my own 12 years of marriage I suspect it went something like this:
I am curious which Catholic Church that was as there are 6 candles on the altar and what appears to be a traditionally attired priest preparing for Mass.
Churches in Paris – A City Guide
Obviously, He’s breakdancing.
It’s the église Saint Louis du Marais.
I can’t say the “extremely attractive” part applied to me (it did to her), but in 1974, I had such an experience, certainement sans portable, in Paris. It was on Ile de la Cité. She was Australian. It just so happened my favorite choir – The King’s College Choir of Men and Boys – was performing in my favorite building – La Sainte Chapelle. Almost too good to be true were I alone! After meeting on the street (oh so tentatively, I overcame my shyness and insecurity and broke the ice), we attended together. But for a frenchman (undoubtedly, he was extremely attractive) I was thrown over for the very next evening, the ensuing love affair might have been for the ages. Rather, as you presciently suggest, Claire, it was a “very exciting afternoon” (and the entire still-thrillingly-memorable-night; vivid in my mind and heart 43 years later at age 72).
A good bit of the grief and longing of old age, for me at least, is accepting the mystery of the fact that I can no longer even imagine being capable of such feelings now – such intense, desirous, needful feelings for another. I can only muster the desire to continue to survive free from some horrible illness. Back then, such feelings did have a life-and-death quality, but however powerful, it was illusory. The setting only enhanced the magic of it all. It was something like having lived a scene in a powerful romantic movie. I can say I retain the desire to return to Paris and to share it with my wife, Gigi (no kidding), a provincial from WV.
Having lived for a year and a half in Lausanne, Switzerland spoiled me for traveling. Ever since, I am left unsatisfied by short visits to places I like. You see, it is impossible to make a place one’s own (so to speak) without actually living there for some time. The desired intimacy with a place, as with a person, takes time and lots of experiences. I’m now too old. Sad.
Thanks, Claire, for the tour.
If its the Eglise Saint Paul Saint Louis then these are the Wikipedia shots:
I once went into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and was standing at the back because there was some kind of service going on. I dropped my little bag of Skittles. Drat that old architecture with its stone floors and accentuated acoustics. I thought I was going to be struck down by lightning.
Paris is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve visited. I spent the better of a day sitting outside a café watching people come and go. I felt a bit guilty at first, after all shouldn’t I be seeing a museum. After a moment or two I came to the realization that sitting there was a pretty good way to spend part of the afternoon.
We do have beautiful Mission Church just south of my home in Arizona. The mission was founded in the late 1600’s and was destroyed by the Apache’s. The current church was built in the late 1700’s. For a time the mission was abandoned when the Franciscans returned years later they found out the Tohono O’ odham people had hidden books and vestments for safekeeping. They had also taught their children the hymns and prayers that they had learned years earlier.
The streaks of paint in the columns were used to try and depict marble because there was no marble available in the desert.
The church is still an active mission church, and has a school for the Tohono O’ odham people.