In Frame & Verse This Month

This month, I found myself returning to two quiet threads in my practice: how love softens the way I see the street, and how understanding a city’s symbols deepens the way I move through it.

I begin with a reflection on how spring — and the presence of someone remarkable in my life — has widened my attention and changed the rhythm of my walking. From there, I turn to Marianne, the quiet guardian of the French Republic, and why knowing her story enriches the way we photograph Paris.

At the end, you’ll find links to all of May’s posts in case you missed any along the way.

When Love Changes the Way I See the Street

Spring has arrived with a kind of sweetness I didn’t expect — not just in the blossoms or the longer light, but in my own life. I’ve found an extraordinary partner, someone who has opened my days in a way that feels both grounding and quietly luminous. And as I’ve been walking through the city with this new fullness in my chest, I found myself wondering: What has she done to me? Will my photographs change now that I’m deeply in love?

It’s a question that surfaced as I revisited the work of more romantic‑leaning street photographers like Valerie Jardin, Edouard Boubat, Peter Turnley and Sabine Weiss — whose images seem to carry a softness, a tenderness, a kind of attentive affection for the world. It made me pause and ask whether love alters the way I move through the street, the way I notice, the way I respond. The following months will tell.

The truth is, mood does shape the frame. When I’m restless or heavy, my pace tightens. I see angles, shadows, solitary figures. When I’m melancholic, I’m drawn to quiet gestures and the subtle distances between people.

But love — real love — does something different. It slows me down. It widens my field of attention. It makes me linger in moments I might have walked past before.
It makes me more reflective.

I find myself noticing small kindnesses, shared laughter, the way light falls on someone leaning into another person. The city feels less like a puzzle to solve and more like a companion to walk with. There’s a gentleness in the way I look, and the camera seems to follow.

And yet, there’s another layer to this. When I slip into the flâneur’s state — that quiet, receptive way of walking where the city’s rhythm overtakes my own — mood softens. Presence takes over. The images become recognisably mine again, shaped less by emotion and more by attention. It’s as if the act of wandering recalibrates me, bringing me back to a steadier way of seeing.

So yes, love has changed me. And I imagine it will change my photographs too — not by making them sentimental, but by opening me a little more to the tenderness already present in the street.

I’m curious to see what this season will reveal. Love has a way of sharpening the eye as much as the heart.

Who is Marianne: The Quiet Guardian of the French Republic

When you walk through Paris — or any French city, really — you meet Marianne again and again. She appears in bronze and stone, on plaques and stamps, in town halls and courtrooms. She is everywhere and nowhere at once: instantly recognisable, yet belonging to no single moment in history.

Marianne is not a historical woman. She is an idea given a human face — the embodiment of the French Republic itself. Born out of the French Revolution, she represents liberty, equality, fraternity, and the enduring belief that a nation can be held together by shared civic ideals rather than by a monarch or a single leader.

Her name comes from two of the most common women’s names of the late eighteenth century — Marie and Anne — chosen deliberately to reflect the people she stands for. She is meant to be ordinary and universal, a symbol that belongs to everyone.

Over the centuries, artists have reimagined her countless times. Sometimes she appears serene, sometimes fierce, sometimes maternal, sometimes resolute. But she is always the same essential figure: a woman who carries the weight and hope of the Republic.

At Place de la République, she stands high above the square, watching over the daily life unfolding beneath her — protests, celebrations, quiet conversations, and the small human moments that make a city feel alive. She is a civic witness, a reminder of the values that shape public life in France.

And here’s where this becomes invaluable for street photographers: understanding the symbols, stories, and layers of a city deepens the way we see it. Paris is especially rich in these quiet anchors — Marianne, yes, but also Abelard and Héloïse, whose resting place at Père Lachaise adds another thread of history and longing to the city’s fabric. When you know these stories, the street becomes more than a backdrop. It becomes a living archive, a place where past and present meet in the smallest gestures.

This is why a title like “A Small Tenderness Beneath Marianne” resonates so deeply. It places a fleeting human moment — two people sharing a quiet connection — beneath a symbol of something larger and enduring. The contrast is gentle and powerful: the intimacy of the present held within the long gaze of history.

Marianne is not a person you can look up in a biography. She is a presence you feel in the architecture, in the public squares, in the very idea of France. A symbol of the Republic, watching over the people it belongs to.

And once you notice her, you begin to see her everywhere — and your photographs deepen accordingly.

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