A Walking Tour of Paris Through Rose-Coloured Glasses

Photographing the City of Light with a special film roll that turns images purple

An image that I haven't retouched in any way. This is a scan the film lab sent me. Photo by William Sidnam.

If there’s one city in the world whose reputation far surpasses its reality, the Oscar must surely go to Paris.

In the world of cinema, television and social media, the French capital is usually portrayed as some kind of Gallic Disneyland, where the women are all models buying designer clothes on the Champs-Elysées, and the men are all Jean-Paul Sartre discussing phenomenology and existentialism at the Café de Flore.

In other words, the vision is a tad misleading.

That’s not to say, however, that Paris is some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland; it remains an incredible city to live in. But the reality is far more nuanced than any TikTok video might suggest.

Yet whilst I’ve written a lot about the ‘real’ Paris that I see around me, today, challenging stereotypes wasn’t on the agenda. If anything, I was prepared to portray the city in the most rose-tinted way imaginable, and I mean that literally.

You see, a few years ago, my sister gave me a film roll for my birthday. Branded LomoChrome 400, it’s a stock known for rendering colours purple that’s ostensibly inspired by a discontinued Kodak…