I’ve been to Paris three times now, each visit a little different—but every time I raise my camera, I was reminded why it is the mecca for timeless street photography. There is just something about it. The city does not pose, it exists. Effortlessly.
It’s in the café windows, the way the light hits, the class and style of how people sit, walk, read, smoke. Paris makes you slow down and observe. The textures, the signage, the sense that every corner has already lived a thousand stories—it is photographic gold and you can feel from the street to the pictures.
When I walk through those streets with my camera, I do not feel like a tourist. I feel like part of a long lineage, paying homage those who came before me with a camera slung over their shoulder and a need to make time stand still. Cartier-Bresson. Haas. Leiter. Their spirit is still there, not in the monuments but in the mundane.
In Paris, people still dress like they are being seen. That matters. It adds elegance to the frame. Even the way someone sits in care and simply observes the streets is a frame. I’m not chasing nostalgia, I’m just acknowledging it is still alive here.
That’s why Paris is always a good idea.
