The Dream Logic of a Paris Fire

Capturing an uncanny moment on the streets of the city and trying to make sense of it in the context of street photography

Outside the Rome metro station in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, people watch smoke in the sky billowing from an unseen fire burning in the distance, near the Palais de Justice. Photo by William Sidnam.

It’s not very often that a photo feels like a fever dream.

In fact, most photos I take don’t really feel like anything while I’m taking them. I just press the shutter, capture the moment and move onto the next one, my mind barely engaged with what my eyes are seeing.

But this photo was different.

It was around 8pm on a Monday evening. I was in a recording studio in north-western Paris with some colleagues, trying to find a music piece to accompany a ‘moodtape’ for a pitch. At one point, one of the sound producers, who had left the room, came back in, only to say that there was a huge blanket of smoke in the sky.

There appeared to be a fire at the Palais de Justice, he said, and it might have been started by the far-right. The leader of the main far-right party had just been convicted with embezzlement, and so there was reason to believe that some enraged supporters of hers might have sought to take it out on whomever they deemed unjust.

As noticeable as the smoke was from the fourth floor, however, I was so focused on my work, I didn’t really dwell on the fire.