You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden. 

— Allen Ginsberg

Arriving in Paris for the first time, one nevertheless feels a sense of familiarity; the buildings, monuments and streets have been immortalized by the monochrome photos of legendary shooters like Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï and Robert Doisneau and have provided the backdrops for decades of local and international cinema releases. The city’s central arrondissements are very much a palimpsest, the past still an indelible part of the present.

MAY, 2013