Apple walk

The story behind the photo

An elderly couple walking arm in arm on the Place de Clichy, and beside them a large polished metal sphere on its stone pedestal, returning the whole square in miniature. Two subjects, one soft and moving, one hard and fixed, placed at the same height in the frame so that neither wins.

The composition is vertical and the couple are deliberately small and slightly off centre. What I wanted was the relation between them and the object: the sphere reflects everything, including them, and they walk past without looking at it. People rarely look at the things that are looking at them.

Black and white was decided before I pressed the shutter. In colour, the square is a mess of signs, awnings and traffic lights, and the eye never settles. In monochrome, the bare branches become a drawing, the facades become texture, and the two coats read as a single dark shape against the pavement.

The light is flat winter light, with no shadows to speak of, which is exactly what this kind of picture needs: nothing is dramatised, the scene simply exists. The one bright accident is the highlight running along the top of the sphere.

I wanted an image about companionship, photographed from behind, at the distance you keep from strangers, with the whole of Paris curved into a metal ball beside them.