Every Thursdays, I drop a video on youtube where I’m sharing the street photography experience one shot at a time.
This episode is in Paris, France. I am hanging out near Gare du Nord station and making my way towards Barbès–Rochechouart and Château Rouge.
Very diverse and cosmopolitan, those areas of Paris are not considered as tourists spots. The African and Caribbean communities have many small businesses down there and it is quite busy on Saturdays with the market and the barbershops.
I was in Paris for a quick week-end and didn’t have too much time to shoot on this occasion due to family engagements. So I secured one hour as soon as the eurostar (London-Paris train) made it at Gare du Nord.
It just happened that the neighbourhoods of Barbès–Rochechouart and Château Rouge are quite close at walking distance of the Gare du Nord station in the Paris 18th district or as we say XVIIIe arrondissement.
Barbes and Chateau Rouge are very well known areas for the African and Caribbean communities.
There is a market as well as many businesses to cater for those communities.
Similar to let say a China Town, it is not surprising to always find pockets of communities gathering together in any big metropolitan cities.
The atmosphere at the market is friendly and it’s agreeable to see people doing their groceries buying ingredients for nice home made dishes or others buying cosmetic products that they cannot find in the mainstream stores.
Some people also wearing traditional clothing is a nice touch and add to the culture diversity that you sometimes can only find in big cities.
Seeing families, especially mothers and their children wearing their traditional outfits with a sense of pride was also very enjoyable from a photography perspective.
Documenting the Afro diaspora is something that I do naturally without thinking too much about it, but I guess we all see ourselves in others and that is reflected in my street photography.
I have to say that although my favourite way of presenting my photographs is in black and white, colour is just hard to ignore when it is vibrant and boldly adding to the composition.
The fact that it was a sunny summer day does also add to the vibrancy of those colours!
Obviously on my way back, I could not avoid capturing some more classic Parisian scenes near cafés while getting closer to Gare du Nord.
Paris definitely deserves to be explored and I’ll be back to capture more of those street scenes for sure.
You can watch the full (edited) video on my youtube channel and as usual, give it a play. Like and subscribe to show some love!
Until next time,
G.
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