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 Eugene 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 felt with sadness and nostalgia.  People occasionally appear as ghosts: dim reflections in shop windows or as blurred movement across the frame.  Hints of life: brooms, carts, and street markets appear abandoned.  With their recurring linear perspective, I was compelled to look into the distance for a possible sense of presence, often to no avail.  A further sense of loss can be felt through Aget's sole focus on Paris's pre-revolution architecture at a time of 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 for particular arrondissements, like a map.  Perhaps when I'm walking through an empty modern Paris in a few months, I'll recall these ghostly images in my mind. 

Below two images I think are my favourite by Atget.  I can imagine walking the lengths of these paths and they remind me of stills from a Béla Tarr film.