Personal Work - Irrémissible

On a rainy evening, a pigeon lay on a wall ledge as if asleep. It was beautiful. So I stopped. After that, I kept stopping. Not always for beauty — but for what no one else seemed to notice: bodies left where they fell, on asphalt, on stone, in rain. Untouched. Unacknowledged. As if they had never existed. A bird flies because it has wings. A stranger wanders because nothing holds him. Both are free to go anywhere. Both went unseen. I have lived in Paris long enough to call it home. But to this city, I have always been a stranger. A stranger notices different things — what others pass by, what is left behind, what the city has learned not to see. Again and again, I found birds. Broken, forgotten, already disappearing. They became impossible to ignore. Each one was simply a life that had ended. In French, a white bird becomes a colombe — a symbol of peace and grace. The same bird, grey and common, is simply a pigeon. Also: a fool. Also: someone easily taken advantage of. The difference is only color. Perhaps that is why I photographed them. Not because they were dead. Because nobody stopped.