Be it pandemic or not, January is always a grey month when we are all in need of aesthetic inspiration, a decent dose of pick-me up, and the best kind of travel: Instagram perusing. Raphael Metivet is a Paris-based photographer that has been making audiences swoon with his shots of the city of light unknown: from rooftops, spying on the everyday lives of Parisians, and doing it all with a general sense of romance.
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Cooped up in our homes, we can’t help but be curious about what others are doing in theirs. And just like that, for many artists including Metivet, the pandemic became a turning point in their careers. Metivet offers the little pieces of Paris that, being in Paris or anywhere else in the world, we cannot otherwise access at this point in time. There is, after all, something behind these beautiful Haussmannian chunks of concrete that turns the world’s heads. It is an aspirational life, la vie parisienne.
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They say that Paris is a moveable feast, and it proves to be so even during lockdown. Dining, smoking out the window, making love, playing the cello… life behind the shutters continues even when it is limited down on the streets. While Metivet was already a panoramic photographer before the pandemic, surely this time period suggested a new way of practicing art. Others seemed to pick up on this same wavelength, like Brooklyn-based photographer Jeremy Cohen, who published an entire rooftop series as he watched his neighbors dance, workout, and dine on the rooftops of New York City. Across the Atlantic, Metivet stepped in with a French touch. The idea is to be safe, but also make beauty. After all, art never stopped in 1918, with both a pandemic and a war going on!
“Paris is an endless ground of discovery, like an open-air museum. I like to capture moments of life there, from the rooftops or the streets. It is truly a poetic city for those who take the time to admire it,” he recently said in an interview with Vogue. Seeing it first hand, his photography allows us to experience it as well.
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His compilation includes imagery of iconic locations including the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré Cœur, but also unknown little nooks and crannies of Paris. Some buildings are extraordinary examples of Art Nouveau architecture, while others are rundown, yet nonetheless charming. It’s all about looking at the city with an inspired eye and sharing the love.
Metivet’s Instagram page is the French instagram that we have all been waiting for. Whether for artistic pleasure or window shopping for your dream home, it’s an honest portrayal of a city that is so near and dear to people all across the planet. Fortunately even during global isolation, social media permits us to travel and feel closer to faraway places. A studio in Montmartre, a penthouse in the Marais, a swanky apartment in Quartier Latin, take your pick! And if you really want to take it, Metivet also sells prints of some of his favorite shots.
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Beyond each beautiful image, there is a story. Metivet has to climb buildings, explore churches, and snoop through friends’ homes in order to get the right shot. But from there, each picture allows you to fill in the blanks and ask your own questions. What is happening in this image? What are they talking about, thinking about? Where would they rather be? And are they also fed up with the quarantine? Could we be friends?
Travel Writing used to be a grand feat in the early 20th century with writers like Hemingway asking questions about the greater world. The 2.0 version is now live on Instagram, where photography acts as a solace for the world’s troubles by inspiring us and rendering the idea that even now, not everything is as bad as it seems.
