THE FINE ART AND PARADOX OF INVISIBILITY
Paris is a beautiful city to visit and is apparently on a lot of people’s bucket list of places to see. About five million people visit the city each year. That’s a lot of visitors. But not everyone stays in a five star luxury hotel, a more affordable second class hotel or even in a cheap walk up flat on some obscure side street. Some visitors end up being down and out in Paris, as in down on your luck and out in the street. George Orwell, Henry Miller and other writers, artists and musicians have documented their experiences living hand to mouth from day to day in the City Of Light. Perhaps it makes for good literature, but it’s surely not an easy life.
It was almost noon and this Asiatic gentleman was still sleeping off the previous night’s alcoholic excess on the sidewalk of the Rue de Buci in the middle of the souvenir shops, bistros, flower shops, bookstores, boulangeries, restaurants and cafés as throngs of tourists bustled noisily by, no one paying him much attention at all. In a city teeming with millions of residents and visitors it’s easy to lose one’s self in plain sight, easy to become anonymous and invisible and yet remain very visible none the less…
Photo taken on the Rue de Buci in Paris in February 2008.
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