Our Lady of Paris

I was 18 years old, the first time that I saw her. It was love at first sight!

As a student in Paris, I would take my Kodak Instamatic, my baguette and “coca” lunch and sit with my legs over the edge of Quai de Montebello, gazing up at her steeple and her towers, as the Bateaux Mouches drifted by, with their adoring tourists photographing her from every angle.

During countless visits in the intervening years, I have photographed her in every weather and through every season.

I became very familiar with her flying buttresses,

climbed her towers and got to know her gargoyles,

became intimate with her carvings and statues

and her views.

Crossing the Pont d'Austerlitz, she was the first landmark I saw when I arrived in Paris and the last I saw when I left.

I was there when she received her new bells in 2013 and will never forget the sight of them in a row along the nave before being hoisted into the bell tower.

She was the first place that I brought my wife to be, on our first visit to Paris together and the last that we visited only a few short weeks ago.

Seeing her in flames on TV was heartbreaking and the fact that she wasn't completely destroyed, a relief.

Whatever happens and however long it takes to restore her, Notre Dame de Paris will always hold a special place in my heart. And like countless artists and photographers, I am grateful for having had the privilege of recording her beauty.