Quai d'Orsay Through the Iron Gate, Paris

3 October 2017 · Paris

The iron gate bars of the Quai d'Orsay push themselves into the foreground, slicing the neoclassical facade of the Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères into vertical strips. The building holds its grandeur behind the security railings — columns, arched windows, a French tricolor against a clouded sky — and the gate turns that grandeur into something that has to be earned by looking. Confinement and ceremony, pressed into the same frame.