PARIS BY DAY PARIS BY NIGHT
“Daniel Cheetham’s photographs are of Paris, but imbued with a new sense of the unknown. Eschewing all cliches’ of one of the most recognizable cities on the planet, his eye finds a new, near mysterious take the familiar.”
Like most capital cities Paris has its attractions, well know and well trodden, captured on collective memory holiday images or postcards of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, Notre Dame cathedral, lamp lit bridges and cafes spilling on to pavements. It is a place to visit in the Spring, the Summer, for love and in sadder recent times for hate. To most tourists Paris remains the same, the places visited remain in memory, the expected images and places a visitor wants and expects to experience.
Paris has been described as being a patchwork of villages, separate cultural quarters with a real sense of community. Paris is constantly changing and becomes a different place to different people.
‘If one isn’t born a Parisian, one becomes a Parisian by living in Paris.’ (Caroline Harleaux & Benjamin Durand)
Daniel journeys through his familiar and unfamiliar Paris. He is revisiting places off the beaten track. Places he has visited before but now with a new eye, finding new possibilities and views. He is attempting to find his Paris not in the moments of Cartier-Bresson, or the fog filled streets and wet cobbles of night we see in Brassai’s ‘Paris de nuit’. Daniel is a visiting Flâneur, exploring and constantly discovering and rediscovering hidden corners of the city. Daniel’s images are an investigation of non-place, the often overlooked and missed, not only by tourists but also by Parisians. Revealing these places in a new light, distinct, and posing the question do we really know the places we in habit. We are left considering our own view of the familiar.
“How do we get there?”
“We walk there, right?”
“Ok”
“Are you picking me up?”
“I’ll set off in 5.”
That’s how it starts. We walk to get some- where, but mainly because there is nothing better than to roam through the city. The lost and shy will often opt for the metro. But once you’ve settled in, that’s when you start to wander, or stroll. You find shortcuts, or you don’t. It’s like taking a break, slowing the pace down. Like going against the tide.
How many times did we cross Paris like this, by day, by night? Going through the clean, crisp and almost disciplined neighborhoods, to the hustle and bustle of those where the rebellion, the chaos and the contrasts of life give the tempo.
If you see something, you don’t say anything, but you invite the other to take the time to observe. It’s become a sort of game to look for the details that caught the other’s attention. Provoking the unexpected is a skill to be acquired. We became familiar with the streets of Paris at an age where the small details didn’t catch our attention. There was to much to do. We grew up and grew fonder of those details. And then, we left Paris.
It is still the city where most of our friends live. We know every nook and cranny of the music venues, we spent entire nights chain-smoking and putting the world to rights, we drank coffee and turned the terrace into a meeting room and debated, about all and nothing.
Oh! The nonchalance…We cherish it. It can also blind us. It has become the perfect target. The army forces patrolling every street corners remind us of how vulnerable all of this is. There is a fracture. Well, two of them, to be precise. They have wounded those who shared our spirit of adventure and enjoyed a careless stroll through the streets of Paris.
News travelled abroad in a thunderous echo. Tourists are sparse these days. You can see it in the metro, in hotels, in cafés… We even admitted missing it a little, old and young people in shorts, head stuck to the maps. Above all, we saw fear in the eyes of others. Strangers who stare into your eyes like never before. Paris is frozen, and no amount of flowers or candles laid on the streets will change that.
If one isn’t born a Parisian, one becomes a Parisian by living in Paris. We will continue to tear down barricades, shouting through the streets, and we will always raise our glasses higher. What can you do, we have a thirst for ideals.
Translation by: Katell Sevellec
