“I can say that I possess all of Old Paris.” Eugène Atget

“They are not lonely, merely without mood; the city in these pictures looks cleared out, like a lodging that has not yet found a new tenant.” Walter Benjamin

It is early morning when I cast myself adrift in these spaces where you walked, but it could be dusk or any other change of the light. It is winter when I leave my room and walk these quiet, shaded streets along the edges of the park, and the city is blue and gently illuminated. Here the lights are diminishing, being extinguished for morning, and the city takes its time to wake up, is still stirring. I walk and consider what might be preserved in these streets, what might be forgotten. In the figures I encounter, passing along pavements, the warm interior of a bus. And I catch myself fading, into the hidden parts of the city. The quiet edges of lost places still there, in certain moments. And I feel the waning night as blue, in spectres that keep moving, as footsteps slowly gather.

You capture in a frame what is disappearing before your eyes. In photographs of deserted Paris streets, a surface slumber unmoved by time. The stillness of interiors, elegant and faded staircases. To pause long enough to be able to see what is haunted about these spaces, to preserve their secrets. In fleeting glimpses of courtyards, open doorways, interiors and windows, the merging of inside and outside dissolving boundaries, to the real and inanimate fixtures of a dream. I share your obsession with reflections and peripheries, with shadow and the changing light.

These pictures that enchanted places, caught in a repose bewitched by time, moving closer to their essence. Distilled through your camera lens. Each frame developing slowly, exposed, and fading in the light. A catalogue of moments, if every photograph records a loss. Documents of a disappearing city, evidence that is open to interpretation. I search them for clues.

The chairs and tables of the pavement café await their visitors. They are empty but retain a presence as they wait there, unoccupied. We don’t see the view that lies before them only the darkened recesses of the café and its windows, obscured. Signs and pictures of posters and advertisements, the corner of another street, the city continues.

The interior of a bar or wine shop, the shape of the bar carved and decorated, ornate yet simple. The mirror on the wall and glasses neatly lined on shelves. The sunlight that comes through the window reflecting onto the line of bottles on the shelf above. The clock on the wall, a sense of expectancy. Empty for just a moment, or a long stretch of time.

These portraits of places retain an aura that captivates, artful and in motion, melancholic and searching. Their stillness retains absence and makes them feel present, as if you are watching, standing there. Waiting just behind the door, reflected in the window. Driven by an instinct to record the existence of these spaces even as they are beginning to fade from view and disappear. In the passing of time, you hung an aura of sadness. Always in these moments of change it seems that what is about to be lost becomes clear. You seek out what is transitory and elusive. Small moments of a city in flux.

In your image of the Panthéon, the monument that emerges appears to be hiding in the background of the photograph while looming shadow occupies the foreground. Languishing into light, as if revealing itself slowly, as an apparition or an afterthought. The dome arising in past hours, faded days. As though it has begun to immerse itself and drift into the open spaces of the city, where squares open outwards.

I watch closely for these details to reveal themselves, to piece together the letters of a sign, the fall of light on stone. The subject in the foreground is submerged in gloom, no daylight falls upon its form to reveal doors or windows. The steps appear to lead up to a blank space. The shapes of the rooftops in pillars and turrets become echoes of the formation of the great monument that lurks behind, just around the corner. The lampposts on the street stand there at intervals. The light is nebulous, gauzy, shrouded in mist. A certain brightness, luminosity, the pavement a shiny plateau under my feet, feet that dance along the cobblestones, soundless, soundless feet. The glow that covers you in obscurity, as if you are fading as I walk, an unreal light. Ghostly appearance of eternity, of solid structure that bends and shifts before my eyes.

If I cross the square, keeping to its edges, and walk behind the Panthéon, I will find rue Mouffetard, curving onwards, inviting me to wander in its side streets. These streets where I felt dizzy when I had walked so many hours. Narrow passages and concealed spaces, blank walls and dead ends. A taciturn stillness that echoes over the façades of the city, always surfacing, muffled and uncertain. This spell of shadow, crossing into darkness or waking into light.

I remember walking here and not existing. In the border regions, traces of your image. An outline, an imprint of the obscure. Then all at once everything that you saw before you is gone, and only this remains. The shape, the structure, the ghost of impermanence. Empty, as if returning to the site of a dream.

I kept seeing the Paris that had gone in the city that remained, walking certain streets, and in certain locations, so that sometimes it was as though they emptied out just for an instant. A place of silhouettes, dark and fleeting. Whenever I see the sign for a hotel, this city appears, if only for a moment. Ancient streets that curve enticingly, that keep their secrets, held by time and occupying shuttered doors and windows. Just beyond the streetlamp and the hotel sign, I crane to see if there is a figure waiting at the bend or walking back along the street but there is none. The light is hazy and filters through between ancient walls, the heavy stone exposed and saturated. A slip in time emerging in these hollowed out places.

There are streets where you must walk straight ahead to leave something behind, not looking back. And those you follow, adjusting your path along the way, or pause on corners with the inky shadows that have gathered there, that no longer disperse. Away from the traffic and the movement of the city, there are quiet streets that retain the shape, and curve of transgression. Fugitive streets where you meander and diverge, and not walk straight ahead. Where you keep on going to see what is beyond the next bend, and suddenly find yourself in another part of the city altogether. And retrace your steps, reluctantly.

I was looking for a hotel that was no longer there or that never existed. I found myself lost in dreams of the hotel room that still waited, at the top of the stairway, at the end of the passage. Imagining its interior, the window overlooking a courtyard. And shadows fell as I was looking.

I cross the square, turn the corner, and walk down a side street. Enter the courtyard and find the staircase waiting, a dream I have passed through before. The faded grandeur and elegance of this interior, the allure of the hallway, silent stone and cast-iron railings curving in an ascent, the atmosphere is dense and guarded. The patterns repeat across the tiled flooring as you walk across to the foot of the stairway and a concealed doorway, recessed and unknown. The stairs call upwards, ornate railings, panelled walls, the suggestion of a chandelier.

I wonder how you would walk this staircase. Would your hand sweep the rail, as you paused to study the intricate ironwork, the carved figures shaped like flowers and vases, statuesque? The softened edges of the stone steps, the high ceilings and aura of stillness, as if continuous and outside time. The iron forming into shapes and patterns, not for function but for display, to tell stories. Shadows hang heavy and creep past, out of sight. The sepia tones that seem to absorb the sound of footsteps falling as they melt into this concave area, lulled into silence by these solid textures and enclosed feelings.

The widening staircase, as you ascend and look upwards as if gazing into infinite spaces, the stairs that go onwards, concealing unknown doors and hallways. That you follow in dreams, a testament to something that is vanishing from view. I hold my breath, deeply moved, looking for traces of your passing. The image seems to diminish, dissolving as you tread the soft stone, enfolded by the light that is always changing.