Paris Vignettes: People in Crazy Color

The Paris Vignettes series features the inspired work of street photographer William “Bill” O’Such in themed installments

As you’ve seen in many of my vignettes, I typically capture interesting people in black and white. After a couple days of street photography, as I triaged my photos, many of the people looked much more interesting in color than in black-and-white. It all started while I was sitting along the Seine chatting with a neighbor who also does photography. As he departed, I turned around and saw someone staring at a large map of Paris but then took a double take and realized there was something colorfully weird on the map (“monstre de Paris”). Heading home I then passed a very brightly colored bouquiniste (“bouquiniste jaune”) before the rain started falling, umbrellas came out, and new colorful images appeared (“parapluie jaune” and “evitant la pluie”).

A few days later during an inspirational walk through Popincourt, we visited several shops and the owner of one of them (“l’art dans popincourt”) happily shared the history of the local art made from reclaimed garbage (e.g. bottle caps). Meandering back to Le Marais, I passed through the Place des Vosges and found an art sale with one artist that echoed his art (“vendeur d’art”) and another where his dog was clearly trop envious of his sandwich (“elle a trop faim”). However, my favorite opportunity was very close to home as I meandered past a local restaurant and a woman, elegantly dressed, passed me reflecting perfectly the colors of the restaurant (“marianne”).