Tension of Two Cities
Image © Charles Marville / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet
The Metropolitan Museum of Art was hosting a French photography exhibit several years back and there was one shot in particular that moved me. During this period in Paris, masses of the working poor were forced out of the inner city and into shanty towns on the city's edge. So while the world saw dazzling development, the more authentic picture was this:
"The photograph conveys what one author claimed in 1870, that Paris was in essence two cities 'quite different and hostile: the city of luxury, surrounded, besieged by the city of misery.' ”
It struck me because I had seen this tension many times. Just saw it again this morning. Pain and the beauty all mixed up together. The perpetual awareness of life in a fallen, beautiful world startles you and changes you. Heartache lives on the same street as hope.
The best is yet to come, and for now, we keep choosing our responses to what we witness.
For the longer story with lessons from our life in NYC, see this post from ten years ago.
Top Photo: Top of the rue Champlain (View to the Right) (20th arrondissement), 1877–1878
Image © Charles Marville / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet