Destiny
- 📍 Location: Coulee verte Rene-Dumont, Paris, France
- 📅 Date: 2021
A couple holding hands, walking away from me into the lit end of a brick tunnel on the Coulee verte. The vault is almost entirely black, the far opening is almost entirely white, and the two silhouettes stand exactly on the boundary between them.
The composition is a single point of perspective, and the only decision was where to stand in it. Too close and the tunnel loses its length; too far and the couple disappear into the glare. I framed so the brick ribs of the vault converge on their two heads, which makes the architecture appear to be pointing at them.
Exposure was set for the daylight outside, which is what turns them into shapes. I could have lifted the shadows and shown the walls, the graffiti and the pipes running along the right side; the picture would have been more informative and much worse.
This promenade is a railway viaduct that was abandoned, then planted, and it runs above and through the twelfth arrondissement for four and a half kilometres. Tunnels like this one are what is left of the trains.
I wanted an image everybody can read without help, and a title that says out loud what the composition is already doing.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
