My Paris

Today, I will start monitoring what I eat - apparently I really *am* getting fat in Paris. Oh dear.

I am too lazy to charge my camera/upload pictures at the moment, so I'm posting part 1 of my photo essay for my last class. Apt timing - I am feeling reflective & nostalgic & sentimental in this city of lights and love. The text gets unwieldy, I know, but the photos are fun.

xxx

My Paris


Chapter One: The Lateral Viewfinder

A girl knows that to see, she must not be seen. Black-kohled eyes are seen as suggestion, as invitation, as invasion – the world changes when it feels a set of pupils running along the curves of its steel-frame body. In fact, the world will not lie still when it knows it is being watched; it deploys the sharp words of old women with angular faces and the forward advances of men in tattered jackets to ward off the threat of the girl’s gaze. Instead, the girl learns to see through black-glass reflections and the zoom function of her camera. It is only when she is perched upon crumbling walls or crouched below the eyes of the crowd that the world lowers its defenses and allows itself to be photographed. Her movements mimic the lateral viewfinder because it is the only way to live in this city.