iPhone Photo Chronicles ~ Turquoise In Tunneltown ~ |
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Forget the metro - let's go way down for a change.
Deep under the flowing boulevards and hustle and bustle of the city streets and even the incessant criss-crossing of the trains lies a much quieter place.
The phreatic layer. The water table. Paris is sitting on a liquid legacy, to such an extent that certain monumental buildings like the Opéra-Bastille and the new Quai Branly museum need to have hundreds of square metres of H2O pumped out of their basements and into the Seine every day. Or they'd break their moorings and simply float away down the river and across the English channel and end up at Dover or even half-way up the Thames if the wind was blowing in the right direction. No, honestly, they would!
The impression I had looking down into this surreal pit was unsettling, and it was difficult to decide if this really was water, or just a greeny-blue gauze that had been placed over the hole for aesthetic effect.
My 10c piece made an averagely realistic splash as it hit the surface in any case, and is now resting, peacefully I trust, at the bottom of Paris for posterity. I should have scratched my name into it really, just to intrigue excavators from the year 3571 who would have asked themselves who this strange 'Sab' character with his name engraved on his very own metal discs was. Probably some sort of pharaoh or something. But I didn't. I'll have to find some other form of imagined immortality I guess. How long does it take for pixels to wear out, anyone?
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© 2011 Sab Will / Paris Set Me Free - Contact me directly for photo tours, interviews, exhibitions, etc.
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