paris: city of the living

i have journeyed halfway around the globe; but nothing i have met in all my wanderings has sufficed to damp the pleasure with which i enter this gay, bright, noisy, restless city – this city of the living, as beyond all others it may be justly called

fanny trollope, paris & the parisians,  1835

sometimes i think the images that best express the existence of people in the urban environment are those in which they are not present. images of  the built environment & other objects produced by human society speak of people so strongly, that their very absence in such a scene intensifies their presence.

do you know what i mean?

 

 

to be in paris is to be

isn’t it just?

ps i discovered this image by atget over a year after i took the photo above … hence the subtitle.

pss the title of the post is a quote by an anonymous correspondent to diarist jean de jandun … 1323