17-4-25 : A day in Temple Bar – 1990

In 1991, I often wandered around Beaubourg — the Centre Pompidou and the square that surrounded it. It was one of those rare places in Paris where everyone seemed to belong: street performers, sketch artists, jugglers, breakdancers, and the endless flow of people who stopped to watch. I would spend hours photographing the faces in the crowd — the laughter, curiosity, and fleeting moments between performer and spectator. It was a living theatre, open to all, and I loved its energy. Now, as Beaubourg prepares to close for five years of renovation, I think back to those afternoons with my camera and remember a Paris that felt both raw and spontaneous — a city performing for itself.

Frédéric Caron is a French photographer whose work explores the limits of both human endurance and photographic technique. Trained in traditional film photography since 1986, he built his career capturing the intensity of extreme environments—from mountain climbing and aerial sports to operational work with firefighters. Today, his latest challenge is photographing the fleeting landscapes seen from a moving train between Valence and Avignon, a daily exercise in precision and patience that reflects his belief that photography exists for its own sake — an art of persistence, observation, and wonder. Link to Fred’s work https://www.instagram.com/fredcaronphotographe/?hl=en

In 1991, I spent weekends wandering through Les Puces de Clignancourt, Paris’s vast flea market on the northern edge of the city. It was a maze of narrow alleys, brimming with old clothes, furniture, records, and faces full of stories. Vendors called out to passersby, bargaining and joking in a mix of French, Arabic, and African dialects. I was drawn to the rhythm of the place—the layers of life, history, and survival all playing out in one sprawling market. My camera followed the movement, the gestures, the laughter, and the quiet exchanges that defined a working Paris few tourists ever saw.