Today, during a photo walk in Paris with a group of fellow photographers, I found myself stopping in the middle of the busy streets when I saw her. A woman, standing at her window, looking out quietly at the world below.
That one moment caught me completely. In a city full of noise and motion, here was stillness. And it made me pause—not just physically, but inwardly.
How did we, as humans, end up living in boxes? Stacked one over the other, facing each other, often never meeting? And yet, I have always been drawn to city life. I’ve spent most of my adult years living in major cities: Beirut,New York, Miami, Boston, Shanghai, and now Düsseldorf.
There is something in city life that speaks to me. The anonymity that comes with crowds. The comfort of seeing people I don’t know and yet feeling some invisible thread that connects us. The sounds, the movement, the constant sense of aliveness.
Whenever I’ve spent long stretches of time in the countryside, as beautiful as it is, I begin to feel restless. I miss the faces, the energy, the possibility that just around the next corner something or someone might appear.
Perhaps this is why I do street photography. There’s a quiet pull to the ordinary moments in city life—the ones that speak loudly if you know how to listen. Like the gaze of a woman in a window in Montmartre.
It’s my second night in Paris, and tomorrow I’ll be on the road back to Düsseldorf. But tonight, I’m still thinking about cities, about windows, and the unseen threads that tie us to places and people—sometimes without us ever knowing why.
And then, of course, there’s the mystery of how each piece of land seems to hold its own character, its own vibration. One more thing to explore.