If I visited an exhibit for an hour for every hour that I were here (1008 hours), I would not even come close to seeing all there is to see art wise in this amazing city! There simply isn’t enough time. However, I am literally around the corner from The Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation. Lucky me! The current exhibit is a showing of street photography documenting the “American Dream in the 30s and 40s” by the man himself and his inspiration, Walker Evans. I don’t know if you know this, but Henri Cartier-Bresson is my biggest influence and in the top five of my all time favorite photographers. He actually coined the phrase the “decisive moment’. He also said: “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.” and “We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.“ He was obviously a brilliant man of deep pathos, and I love about everything he says in relation to the craft of photography, but this last quote is probably my favorite and the most freeing from the confinements of perceived perfection: ” The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.” The images that I made today are a tribute to this quote and to getting back to the soul of my work—which has always been and always will be, about documenting and seizing time and the human condition—I have always been a street photographer at heart.

I love the rain—really…. I don’t think I could ever get too much of it. I’m one of those people who could easily live in the Northwest and soak it all up. A day of sunshine every now and then would be great, of course but there is something so quite and calming about the rain and it seems to allow one to move a little slower, sleep in a little later, bundle up a little more, and take a day to themselves. That is what this entire trip is for me, so the rain on Tuesday was just the icing on the cake.

I lost my passport—not sure where, but I’m thinking I must have dropped it in the airport or in the cab to my flat. So Tuesday, I went to the American Embassy to fill out paper work to get a new one. To make a long story short, my passport was turned in (by some angel) and I simply walked out of the place unscathed. The American Embassy is in the 1st arr of Paris—one of my favorites! It’s the same arrondissement where the Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries is—probably the most toured and famous area in Paris. So, because it was raining, and I was hungry, and the park was right there, I went to a little Italian restaurant right in the middle of the park for a cafe au lait, some risotto and of course, a glass of wine. It was a splurge, to say the least, but how often does one get a restaurant like that to herself in the middle of a deserted park on a rainy afteroon in Paris? It was heaven! I sat there, inside and cozy and looked out at the empty park. Then I walked it in the rain and played a little child’s game with myself. Because this park is so famous and toured, I was afraid of creating images that were cliche or had been done a thousand times before…. (even by me). But then I tried to get in my heart a little, and ask myself, what do I love about this day? What do I love about this park? What do I see–thus the title of this post. Yes, Julie. But what do you see? Even if it’s cliche—or even if it’s what other people are seeing too…. So I walked around for a couple hours talking to myself like a child, “I see the rain on the leaves”. “I see empty chairs”, etc, etc. En francais. These are the images that I “saw”, and that left me feeling how the rain makes me feel—like I can move a little slower and just breathe….

Je vois la belle consolation

Je vois l’éternité

Je vois le majestueux

Je vois les cycles de vie

Je vois lonliness

Je vois l’espace

Je vois la liberté absolue

Je vois le confort

Je vois la nostalgie

quelquefois, je vois la chose peu évidemment

Je me vois

Je vois l’harmonie et la balance

Je vois le confort amoureux

Je vois la couleur

Je vois la vie que je veux