Some cities, like Paris, are soaked in memory. Walk down almost any street and you’ll see a plaque: here, in this building in July 1778, Mozart’s mother passed away. Or, at this spot, in August 1944, these ten resistance fighters were assassinated. Or: here is where Picasso lived for eighteen years. 

On the corner of Rue de Sèvres and Rue de Babylone stands the majestic Lutetia. Now a luxury hotel, it’s a minute walk from the upscale shopping district of Bon Marché and Rue de Bac. In the Paris of 1945, things were different. Hotel Lutetia served as the incoming center for returning concentration camp survivors. Along its long corridors, ex-inmates were sprayed with disinfectant and housed two in a room. Reportedly, they took the mattress off their beds. The hotel room floor was preferable; a soft mattress was a luxury their frail bodies could not yet accommodate.

Eighty years ago, this was a major happening on the corner of Rue des Sèvres and Rue de Babylone. But there are surely other, many little happenings, that occur daily on this corner. Things that pass in an instant and unwitnessed and will always remain unknown. 

One afternoon, some eight years ago, I was in front of Lutetia. It was a narrow pedestrian zone zigzagged with steel construction barriers. Everyone had to contract themselves into half their body space to get around anyone else. Suddenly two women are heading my way, single file. Each has their right hand draped over her heart, as if they are doing some kind of synchronized street dance. But they don’t look like they are even aware of the other.

The two women nearly pass me now. I act instinctively, never look through the camera’s viewfinder, just aim the lens in their direction. This photo is a witness to that improbable moment. A centimeter to the left or right, the click of the shutter a split moment too soon or too late, and this little happening in the shadow of the Lutetia would have happened anyway, but without my camera bearing witness to it. Street photography is often like that, with neither the help of a plaque nor history to remember. In space and time, it simply sits on the sharp edge of chance.