I'm planning a trip to Europe over January: London, Paris, Berlin, Venice, etc. Everyone keeps telling me that the cities will be very quiet, that the intense cold leaves a pervading stillness over Europe during the winter. I don't mind participating in this seasonal quietness as I want to get a sense of a modern working city, not one that's on holiday. As clichéd as it sounds, I want to be a part of the cities' mechanics: to blend in with locals, and feel as though I've always been there.
While looking for books related to a uni assignment, I came across a library book of photographs by Eugéne Atget from the early 1900s. The images capture desolate Paris streets, with a focus on architectural details such as staircases, doorways, and cobbled laneways. The absence of people is palpable. They occasionally appear as dim reflections in shopfront windows or as blurred ghostly movement. Hints of life: brooms, carts, and street markets lie stationary and unused. With their recurring linear perspective, I was compelled to look into the distance for a possible sense of presence within his frames- often to no avail. A further sense of loss and absence can be felt through Atget’s sole focus on Paris’ pre-revolution architecture in the context of the city’s then rapid modernisation. The photographs are a sentimental document of the exhausted and diminishing spaces of the “old Paris”. In my dreaming and planning of this trip, Atget's images have become references of particular arrondissements. Perhaps when I'm walking through a changed Paris in a few months, I'll recall these ghostly images in my mind.
