Between Concrete and Chinatown

Paris has a way of making you believe you already know it.

The Eiffel Tower. Montmartre. The Seine. Café terraces filled with tiny tables and people watching the world pass by. They are all part of the city, but this time I wanted something different. I wanted to photograph a Paris that doesn’t immediately announce itself as Paris.

So I went south, to the 13th arrondissement and the streets around Chinatown.

And almost immediately, the city changed.

Here, Paris feels taller, rougher and somehow more cinematic. Massive residential towers rise into the sky. Concrete walkways curve between buildings. Chinese characters appear on shopfronts. Restaurants, supermarkets and small businesses bring flashes of red into an architecture dominated by grey and beige. It is not postcard Paris.

And that is exactly why I loved photographing it.

A different Paris

My first impression was the scale. Standing between the high-rise buildings, people suddenly become small. The architecture dominates the frame. Towers disappear upwards, while long façades create endless patterns of windows, balconies and lines.

For street photography, it is fascinating.

Instead of searching only for a person or a decisive moment, I started looking at the relationship between people and their surroundings. Someone walking home with a shopping trolley becomes part of a much larger composition. A pedestrian crossing an open square gives scale to the concrete landscape. A solitary figure passing through a patch of sunlight can completely transform an otherwise empty scene.

You wait. Someone enters the frame. And suddenly everything falls into place.

That happened several times during this walk.

A woman dressed in red stopped in front of an intensely red restaurant façade. The sunlight cut across the scene, leaving parts of the surroundings almost completely in shadow. For a few seconds, person, colour, architecture and light became one composition.

A little later, another passer-by walked through the square wearing an outfit filled with warm tones. Behind him stood a bright red restaurant, while enormous apartment blocks towered above everything.

Those are the moments I search for when walking with a camera.

Nothing is staged. The city does all the work. You just have to notice it.

Red against concrete

If there is one colour that kept returning throughout Chinatown, it was red.

Red shopfronts. Red signs. Red details. Red clothing. Red characters painted on walls.

Against the muted architecture of the neighbourhood, the colour becomes incredibly powerful.

I found myself composing photographs around it again and again.

Sometimes the colour dominated the entire frame. At other times it was only a small detail a backpack inside a butcher shop, a jacket passing through the street, or lettering above a storefront.

This is something I love about street photography: once you start looking for a particular colour, shape or pattern, the city seems to offer more of it. Your way of seeing changes.

And suddenly you are no longer simply walking through a neighbourhood. You are collecting visual connections.

Life behind the storefronts

Chinatown is not only about its architecture.

The most interesting moments often happen closer to street level. Behind windows and counters, another rhythm appears. A butcher shop filled with products and handwritten signs. A small shop where shelves are packed from floor to ceiling with books, magazines and music. Two women studying a drinks menu. People carrying shopping bags or pulling their groceries behind them.

These scenes are ordinary. And perhaps that is precisely what makes them interesting.

Street photography does not always need a spectacular event. Sometimes it is about preserving the everyday. A gesture. A glance. Someone choosing what to buy.

Someone waiting. Someone simply walking home.

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The camera turns those small moments into fragments of a much bigger story.

One photograph in particular captures that feeling for me: two women standing in front of a brightly illuminated menu. I chose black and white for that image. Removing the colour shifts all attention towards their silhouettes, their hair, the light from the menu and the small distance between them.

It becomes less about where they are and more about the moment itself.

Where architecture becomes a stage

What surprised me most about this part of Paris was how theatrical the architecture can feel. The curved roofs, elevated walkways and monumental apartment blocks create natural frames everywhere. Sometimes I simply chose a composition and waited for someone to enter it.

The architecture became the stage. The people became the story.

One of my favourite encounters was a woman walking two small dogs beneath the towers. Misty light softened the buildings behind her, almost making them disappear. The scene felt strangely timeless — somewhere between everyday Paris and a frame from an old film.

Elsewhere, the sunlight was much harder.

Deep shadows divided the streets into geometric shapes. People moved between darkness and light, appearing for only a few seconds before disappearing again.

That contrast made me slow down. Instead of chasing photographs, I started waiting for them.

Made in China

Then there was the mural.

MADE IN CHINA.

Large red letters above painted tower blocks, with a woman pulling her shopping trolley through the scene. It almost felt too perfect. The real architecture outside, the painted architecture on the wall and the person moving between both worlds created exactly the kind of layered photograph I enjoy making.

It is documentary, but also slightly surreal. A photograph of a place, but at the same time a small visual joke about that place. Those unexpected combinations are one of the reasons I keep walking with a camera.

You cannot plan them. You can only be ready when they appear.

Paris without the postcard

Chinatown reminded me why I enjoy exploring cities beyond their famous landmarks.

There is nothing wrong with photographing the Eiffel Tower. But sometimes the most memorable photographs are found several metro stops away from everything we think we already know.

In the 13th arrondissement, I found another Paris. A Paris of concrete towers and Asian supermarkets. Of red façades and long shadows. Of small shops packed with stories. Of people walking dogs, carrying groceries, reading menus and crossing squares beneath buildings that seem impossibly large.

A neighbourhood where cultures, architecture and everyday life constantly overlap.

And perhaps that is what street photography means to me. Not searching for perfection.

Not searching for the photograph everyone else already has.

But walking. Watching. Waiting.

And discovering those brief moments when light, colour, architecture and people unexpectedly come together. Because sometimes you have to leave postcard Paris behind…

to really start seeing Paris.

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