I met another francophile over the weekend, and we had a conversation about our shared love of Paris. It was fascinating to hear a perspective so different from my own; she described her relationship with Paris as a romance, and said that after about a month, it begins to lose its magic. “It’s like when you have a new boyfriend,” she said, “and then he movies in and you find out he throws his socks on the floor.” Perhaps it is because my first Parisian apartment was located on rue de Clignancourt, just steps from Barbes-Rochechouart metro station, but there have always been proverbial socks on the floor in my relationship with Paris, and I love the city as much for its flaws as for its beauty. Paris is the immaculately groomed Jardin du Luxembourg; it is macarons and champagne and sunsets on the banks of the Seine, it’s true. But is it also the gritty, discount shop-lined streets of Montmartre; the bootleg cigarette vendors and the heavily graffitied Parc de Belleville, where I shot these photos with my dear friend Valentine. And I sometimes think that these parts are my favourite, because everyone already knows that Paris has style – but her less conventionally beautiful parts prove that she has substance, too.
