Forgot the keys
- 📍 Location: La Villette, Paris, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
A woman stopped in the middle of the cobbles at La Villette, bag open, searching through it, in front of a striped building marked with a large numeral. The sun is directly behind the roof edge and throws a star across the top of the frame.
Street photography is mostly a matter of recognising a gesture fast enough. The composition was already there, the diagonal of the paving, the stripes of the facade, the light coming from behind, and it needed an event. Somebody stopping to look for something takes about four seconds, and it is one of the most universally legible gestures there is.
I exposed for her rather than for the sky, which lets the highlights burn and keeps the figure and the cobbles readable. The flare that comes with shooting into the sun spreads across the upper left and softens the building, which I wanted: the architecture is context, not subject.
This is the old abattoir quarter turned into a park, science museum and concert hall, and it has an unusual amount of open ground for Paris. People cross it in straight lines, looking at their phones, exactly as they do everywhere.
I wanted a photograph of a small private panic in a very large public space.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
