When the Camera Lies

The story behind a photo of Paris taken in lockdown

The silhouette of a woman looks at the Eiffel Tower in the night sky. Photo by William Sidnam.

I still remember the moment.

I was standing on a balcony, waiting for the instant to arrive. It was a few weeks into the first lockdown and the streets were tumbleweed quiet.

At the time, I was living in a suburb of Paris, jobless, with little inkling of what the future would hold. Having only entered the country ten days prior to confinement, I couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to mark my entrance.

While lying in bed one evening, I heard the sound of a skateboard hurtling past my window. In the silence of lockdown, someone had turned the dead streets into a skatepark.

As the weeks went by and the days blurred into one another, I would hear the skateboard again and again. I began to wonder whether I could possibly catch sight of the skater, if only to sneak a photo. One of my goals upon arrival in France was to do some street photography — an activity which, due to the circumstances, was proving hard to practice. But if I were to be holed up at home, there was nothing to stop me taking photos from the balcony.

Of course, taking photos of strangers outside from the comfort of home might sound unforgivably creepy. But the way I saw it, if we weren’t allowed to be outside during this period of…