Étant la plus saisissante manifestation de l’art des constructions métalliques par lesquelles nos ingénieurs se sont illustrés en Europe, elle est une des formes les plus frappantes de notre génie national moderne.
Gustave Eiffel
Here I am with this gorgeous Leica M2 I scored at some outdoor market in Marseille, and I’m pointing it at the most photographed hunk of iron in human history, thinking I’m capturing something, anything, that matters. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the only photo that came out on that role of film.
And I was. Just not what I thought.
Because twenty-four hours later, we’re hearing about Chernobyl, and suddenly that rain we were dancing in, that atmospheric bullshit I was breathing while framing my shot, might be laced with cesium-137 and all the other greatest hits from the Soviet nuclear playlist. The tower’s still standing there, immortal and indifferent, while invisible particles are doing their slow-motion Nagasaki routine on my DNA.
That’s the thing about cameras, about freezing moments: they lie by telling the truth. That frame says “April 1986, Paris, beauty, permanence, look at this marvelous structure.” It doesn’t say “the world is ending 1,500 miles east and I don’t know it yet.” Doesn’t say “I’m all contaminated and laughing about it.”
The Eiffel Tower’s been there since 1889, survived two world wars, outlasted everyone who built it. My Leica caught it on film while invisible poison drifted west. Both machines, doing what they do: bearing witness, preserving evidence, marking time.
And here I am, decades later, still here. Those rain clouds hopefully came from Norway or Sweden rather than the Ukraine. The tower, the photo, me, survivors of everything that tried to kill us, most notably our own beautiful, reckless ignorance.