Dispatches from Paris

27.03.2013

Black and white pair of Paris night shots, the shuttered Mega-Lots shop and a muscled mannequin in knee braces in a window

In a bid to shamelessly use my holiday photos as ‘internet content’, here are some photographs I took after a few day’s sabbatical in gay Paris. As they say over there, “j’ai oublier mon cahier.”

Black and white shot of someone with a backpack carrying a large framed picture on an underground escalator in Paris

Black and white shot down tiled steps as someone with curly hair in a long dark coat heads underground in Paris

Black and white pair of shots, newlyweds in white embracing under bare Paris trees, and a figure crossing a formal lawn

The photo on the left may look like a romantic vista, but do you see that small building near the trees to the right? Well only a few minutes before I poached this shot of some happy newlyweds, I went for a slash round there only to be greeted with an indescribably dreadful scent. On looking up I then found out what Indiana Jones must have felt like when he realises he’s surrounded by snakes, but instead of hissing serpents I was surrounded by about a dozen separate instances of human excrement. How did I know it wasn’t dog muck? Well Parisian dogs may be pretty classy, but I’m pretty sure they don’t use toilet paper. I somehow managed to exit with my shoes unscathed but the damage was done and to me at least, Paris has forever lost its romantic sheen.

Black and white Paris street, someone in a hooded coat with a walking stick at the kerb by a zebra crossing and a white van

Black and white shot of worn camper vans parked along a Paris street, one half-covered in a tarpaulin, under bare trees

Black and white shot of someone in glasses and a dark cardigan behind the counter of a Paris jewellery shop

Black and white pair of shots of someone in a padded gilet stretching against the railings of a park bandstand

Black and white shot of someone in a fur-trimmed hood and sunglasses on the phone beside a wide Paris boulevard

Black and white night shot of a long-haired white sighthound on a lead on a paved Paris street

Black and white pair of shots, a litter-strewn light well and someone riding a scooter over a zebra crossing in Paris

They sure do love wheeled apparatus on the continent. I’ve heard in London you’re never more than five metres from a rat, but in Paris you’re never more than five metres from a business man on a scooter/Segway/snake-board with his tie blowing back in the wind. One particular standout was a forty year old woman in leather hot pants who zipped past on roller-skates whilst shouting in sheer delight. My trigger finger wasn’t quick enough off the mark, so when she’d stopped at the lights, I chased after to get a quick snap of the Parisian version of Starlight Express. Sadly she didn’t hear my cries of ‘let me get a picture’ under the uplifting sound of European dance music blasting out of her headphones, and skated off in the distance to forever be the roller-skating mad-head that got away.

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