Sacré-Cœur swirl

The story behind the photo

The Sacré-Cœur at sunset, seen from the foot of the hill, with the carousel on the left, the trees of the square closing the sides, and a sky of long curved cloud turning above the domes. The basilica sits high and centred; everything else in the picture leans towards it.

The clouds are the reason for the title and for the frame. They were moving fast and drawing an arc across the sky, and a wide angle from low down exaggerates that curve until the whole upper half of the picture seems to rotate around the dome. Shooting from higher up the steps would have given a straighter, duller sky.

The light is the last direct sun of the day, coming in from the left and catching the white travertine of the basilica, the stone famous for bleaching itself in the rain. Against a sky already going mauve, that whiteness is almost too strong, and I underexposed slightly to keep it from tipping into the bare white of the paper.

This is one of the most visited places in Paris, yet when I took this picture the steps were empty. I framed wide enough to keep the carousel: one small human machine at the bottom, one enormous religious one at the top.

I wanted a photograph of a place everybody knows, in which the sky does more work than the monument.