Upon my arrival in Paris, I headed for the Island, Cité, to walk around Notre Dame and the public park.  My walk lead me straight to Pont de L’archevêché where people from all over the world place locks on the bridge as a declaration of love.  To some, it’s romantic, to others it’s an eyesore.  I have mixed feelings about it but it did afford me a burst of colour on an otherwise bitterly cold and greyish day.  As I had taken my 50mm lens along for the trip I decided to make it all about the 50mm and started to take photographs of the locks.  The messages on some of the locks were fabulous and I think my heart melted a bit.  Working with the 50mm afforded me some DOF exploration and these were the results.  However, a few days previous to my trip I had read what some of the locals think about the new tradition and I repeat it here as to me, it makes sense:

“The fools! They haven’t understood a thing about love, have they?” was the conclusion recently of a 23-year-old waiter at Panis, a cafe on the Left Bank with a view over Notre-Dame. At the heart of love à la française lies the idea of freedom. To love truly is to want the other free, and this includes the freedom to walk away. Love is not about possession or property. Love is no prison where two people are each other’s slaves. Love is not a commodity, either. Love is not capitalist, it is revolutionary. If anything, true love shows you the way to selflessness.”

It’s a shame that people don’t relate to love in this way ~ I think the world would be a better place if we all did.

Arms linked, laughing, they walked past me.

Paris ~ France.