These photographs were made during the summer of 2004 in a Paris neighborhood that has become my home over the past few years. I find that Paris shares the human scale of Brooklyn, where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. I’ve always loved the feel of pavement beneath me and the mysteries that one discovers along it.

In a city two thousand years old, is there any space or surface that does not bear the imprint of the millions of lives that have passed through it and the millions who yet inhabit it in varying degrees of visibility or invisibility? In spite of its endless seductions, this place always on some level maintains its opacity and resistance to my designs. Even the walls seem to harbor stories, but they usually remain tight-lipped.

In Paris, one is always walking with ghosts.

Lou Marcus is a part-time Parisian and full-time Francophile. His work is exhibited nationally and internationally, and is held in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and George Eastman House. Recent exhibitions include the Southeast Museum of Photography and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. He is a Professor of Photography in the School of Art and Art History at the University of South Florida where he teaches photography and the history of photography, and coordinates the School's summer art program in Paris.

marcus@arts.usf.edu

© copyright 2006 Lou Marcus. All rights reserved.