Photo Diary
14 days in 75019
Paris | Jan. 2025.
Hippodrome de Vincennes, 2024.11.17.
DAY 01
Hop off from metro at Pyrénées,
going back to my place as usual.
Jan | 15 | 2025
饗宴 | Festin
Been living here in the 19th district since Oct, 2023.
Before, I stayed at my sister’s place to be the babysitter full-time. After several years on and off in Paris, I found myself in urgent to regain myself. Or so to speak, not to waste all those nuances that I’ve accumulated whether it’s in life, in my daily routine or in photography.
Paris amongst all of this is apparently a feast, a well-known feast. Yet through my cameras I managed to made it haunts me constantly, I still don’t belong here, I would never belong to Paris I think. I don’t see this as a problem though, since I don’t believe in where I am physically is the only factor for me to exist.
Paris | 75019
DAY 02
How on earth would I end up being here,
I mean from Taiwan to Paris,
I mean to be here for quite a while.
Jan | 16 | 2025
蝸牛 | Escargot
Funny is that just ten meters away from my doorstep, there’s a rugby bar named ‘’L’Escargot.’’ I assumed the naming relates to the resemblance of the district map of Paris with a snail. I like the name although I never step in that crowded place.
Down this alley which the taxi in the photo was coming from, there’re workshops of craftsmen with shoes, carpentry, painting, fabrics and tailoring. While restaurants, grocery stores, a laundry, a bookshop, cafes, barista and of course a boulangerie supplying all the basic daily needs.
I love my neighborhood here, kind of vibrant, and I have a little place here where ones have to go through a facade building, tiny garden and finally to reach to my studio.
Paris | 75019
DAY 03
After entering the front building,
there’s a tiny garden first.
Jan | 17 | 2025
中庭 | Jardin
Perhaps it’s because my background with urban planning that I believed firmly in me having the ability to sense and analyze my surroundings decently. Even if the scale here is a metropolitan, a city or a single architecture/building.
But it isn’t like me being conscious of what I want or where I am. In the other hand it’s more like law of attraction I guess. So I end up here luckily, by coincidence to be precise. I mean I think where I am also represents me and my surroundings push me simultaneously to their future, their next second. So it’s difficult for me to stay the same, stay steadily. I need to be exist and only to be existed by the evidences I collected through my lenses.
Paris | 75019
DAY 04
et Voilà,
avec moi,
chez moi.
Jan | 18 | 2025
肖像 | Portrait
In Fact, rather than trying to be invisible, I’m clear that I tend to be more of a silhouette, maybe like the pathetic miserable phantom of the opera, and by no means that I think the phantom equals to the evil.
Wait, I forgot to mention the Hunchback. The same pathetic miserable circumstances, the Esmeralda who the hunchback believed naively that he can save. Although I think the recent fire happening to Notre Dame de Paris is caused by the very hunchback, but who am I to speak. After all I stopped and stared at my gateway of hell of the Pompidou center even before my original plan of to try to get myself into the reopening ceremony of Notre Dame de Paris after the fire.
Paris | 75019
DAY 05
I see myself as a haunted person,
always entangled with such insecurities,
while trying to let my spiral, upwards.
Jan | 19 | 2025
樓梯間 | Escaliers
Solemn is one of the qualities I trust, and solemnity comes only from well-embedded historical traits and values, while often they’re neglected by the fast-paced and ever changing reality.
What nonsense I’m speaking again, but I can’t stop thinking anyway. I mean they’ll grow, they’ll follow the stairs to upstairs or downstairs, and I’m at the floor neither ground or top, somewhere in between for sure, but there’s no bathtub for me to soak in nor the doors are not always opened.
Paris | 75019
DAY 06
The smell is always weird,
mixed with incense, fragrance, essential oil, perfume, tobacco.
Jan | 20 | 2025
房間 | Chambre
Treat my room as an individual, yet I think I manage and organize my room in a fashion that I wish I’m to be taken care of the same way. Can’t be more specific than this, because there’s no leverage to balance out the weirdness and awkwardness of me. Although I suited up, camouflaged and be there.
I’m confusing again, since I changed my incense from hinoki to lotus, probably sandalwood for tomorrow, I’m into those woody smells more at the end of the day, now this is for sure.
Paris | 75019
DAY 07
Tiny room, tiny life, with cameras I navigated myself,
But there’s still no ambition in this.
Jan | 21 | 2025
相機 | Appareil photo
New Canon R6 has arrived ! Remember me speaking about solemnity? I mean, like um, with cameras, I feel like cameras are my physical instruments to perceive the informations transmitting by waves of lights, but other than my own eyes, cameras did the same job in a reverse logic, so what I get at the end is somewhat evidence to prove that me exist and to demonstrate the nuances caused by me while affecting the reality.
The other solemnity I treat with my Canons is that at the very beginning, 550D which is an elementary-tier DSLR that I used to get myself familiar with the basics of photography. After about 8 years, 7D mark II came along, 7D had been with me wherever I go worldwide, no need to ……
Paris | 75019
DAY 07
Tiny room, tiny life, with cameras I navigated myself,
But there’s still no ambition in this.
Jan | 21 | 2025
相機 | Appareil photo
Mention that 7D is basically my physical extension to my eyes and arms. Now, about 9 years later, full-framed R6 mark II has come into my hands.
It’s because I believed in photography rather than cameras that I want to demonstrate my images through photography itself. As a consequence, I think I put souls into my cameras by using each of them for long periods of time. And this is weird since cameras are some products that ones get to buy them easily or replaced by smartphones more often these days.
For the souls I put into my cameras, probably they’re quite nostalgic, somewhat vulnerable and fragile, having some serious thoughts, but no ambition worthy to brag about, just like me.
Paris | 75019
‘‘ Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same :
leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. ’’
- Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on Language.
DAY 08
Is it to find my own stability and balance just like the meaning of my name,
or to give ?
Jan | 22 | 2025
安定平衡 | Stabilité & Équilibre
Everything has got to be related to my name “李 定衡”。
李：Lee, my family name. Symbolically the character composed from wood(the upper half “木”) and child (the bottom half “子.”) I think that’s why I’m that into those woody smells like hinoki, pine and sandal.
定衡： Ding Herng, my first name. First word Ding “定” comes from “安定,” which means stability. Second word Herng “衡“ comes from ”平衡,” which means balance.
I used to think that my mission is find stability within me and balance myself, yet nowadays I questioned myself that perhaps is to give, not to find.
Paris | 75019
DAY 09
From nowhere I came, to nowhere I’ll go.
Jan | 23 | 2025
如來 | Bouddha
Got a Buddhist beaded amber bracelet as my grandmother’s last thing to gave me. At first it belonged to my dad, but last year he gave it to me since both of us thinks that I’m the one who needs it.
I started to be interested in philosophy of Buddhism way before my grandmother past away. At the time I was in college, accepting educations rooted from western philosophies. In the end I’m quite convinced that there’s no end nor a comfortable age to discuss all this big-ass questions about the universe or the morality of human beings etc. You see that to be nothing seems to be the final answer of everything. And I recognized myself and reconciled with myself by the beads of amber, that’s my principle now.
Bussy-Saint-Georges | 77600
DAY 10
The Buddhism venerable and my nephews.
Since it was near Chinese lunar new year,
of course there’re my family members and hot pot.
Jan | 24 | 2025
除夕 | Réveillon du Nouvel An lunaire
Been 3 years consecutively that I missed the Chinese new year back in Taiwan, and I miss it.
Coming from a family that respect our traditions a lot, we have so many ceremonies, habits and things to do in traditional methods during the whole Chinese new year, while myself being proud to have this sorts of knowledges and practicing my culture properly even during these times.
I miss the concept of round, or circle. Chinese people mostly have born with an underlying social habit that circle means good, means to fulfill, to accomplish, to reunion, to have everything in their place and in their order which the nature then, may flourish.
And yes a hot pot is a round dish and close ones should sit at a round table that everyone share the foods together especially when Chinese new year.
Bussy-Saint-Georges | 77600
DAY 11
Glad to be accepted by my new family.
With them I felt that only tomorrow matters,
not the past nor the solitude.
Jan | 25 | 2025
火鍋 | Fondue
Met this group of people only 4 months ago, and I was not prepared for this. I knew that I’m not a people person, but just like my nephews do, they opens me up quietly and gradually towards a sharing future.
I did not asked them to come to my place and be with me for Chinese new year, I only knew that I want to have hot pot for myself. Yet it’s my room itself who asked people to come, letting the broth boiled for about ten people but not only for one. I guess that I don’t want to be alone anymore from lots of different perspectives. So my room got a sense of that, like the way I treat it.
Paris | 75019
DAY 12
It’s time for me to stop thinking,
I did nothing wrong,
and regardless what I’ve achieved.
Jan | 26 | 2025
團圓 | Réunion
Holes are the areas that a circle circles, and they have no begins nor they end.
No, cut this bullshit already, I need to stop doing this meaningless procedure towards nothing. But wait, everything is suggesting me to be nothing and nothing still, then why I want to stop this ?
I thought it’s cute that Souraya worn out her socks, while me being the stubborn Asian guy who insist on wearing slippers indoor even we’re in Paris, by the way I’ll probably be a firm disciple to the cult that Alejandra may create in the near future, we’ll use socks with holes as our masks, and insist on wearing slippers indoor while bare foots when we’re in the nature, on the earth, to the soil. Till then the reunion occurs, and we’d be seeing each other once again.
Paris | 75019
DAY 13
Je crois que je n'ai vu que quelques fois ces danses du dragon à Paris.
Ça suffit à Taiwan ou en Chine continentale pendant le nouvel an chinois.
Et pourtant, quand elles me manquent,
elles apparaissent.
Jan | 27 | 2025
舞龍舞獅 | Danses du dragon & lion
Sunny day are scarce in the winter time here in Paris. A briefly 5 minutes of sunshine is worth celebrating, a whole day of sunlights is just miracle.
My miracle here is that the sun shines upon this new year, brought my home town over here, despite having the impulse to fly back to Taiwan even for just a week, I still kept it secret, for now I see myself away from home, since going back means the same as coming here.
Paris | 75004
‘‘ This is what I wanted to hear from you:
confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies! ’’
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
DAY 14
Salut.
Dans mon jardin,
il devrait y en avoir Assez ;
il devrait y en avoir Plus ;
il devrait y avoir
un peu moins de Silence.
Jan | 28 | 2025
歸去 | Retourner
願我們隨心所欲而不致渾噩，
爾後團圓仍永遠青春。
不如歸去，也無所復往。
昨天無所從來，明天亦無所去，在哪是我如來？
May we follow our hearts and not be confused. Afterwards we will be reunited and still be forever young. Better be going back, yet there’s nowhere to go.
Came from nowhere the yesterday, and nowhere tomorrow will be at.
To where is me being here and not.
Shush ! The noise is loud but I still can’t hear it clearly!
Paris | 75019
