JILL.DESIGN

Paris reflections on my past and future as an artist.

I took this photo in Paris when I was 16 in 1988.

It is my earliest street photography, probably taken on a borrowed-from-my-dad Canon AE-1. I developed the film and printed it myself in a darkroom class at school.

Last week, I tried to find this same spot again — it’s in the Tuileries gardens near the Louvre. The benches look the same, but statue is no longer there. I am deep in my online research on where exactly it was or has gone. To be continued.

I have visited Paris at ages 11, 16, 20, 21, 35, 44, and 52.

I’ve lived many lives between those visits — from girl to woman. Every time I return, I feel my past selves walking alongside me. There are favorite things I always seek out, but I also often stumble upon things that I haven’t seen in decades.

Buried treasures.

The city is full these for me. Sudden déjà vu, flashbacks, Proust’s madeleine. It’s a palimpsest of sorts — layers of memory, with bits torn off or peeling here and there, revealing what is underneath and showing through to the surface to create something new.

I took this photo last week in Paris, when I was 53 in 2025:

It’s a double-exposure I made in-camera. I love double-exposures for portraits, self and otherwise — they feel true to both the outside self and what lies beneath.

I remember vividly the first time I was called Madame in France.

I was 44. I’d somehow made it up to that point still passing as a Mademoiselle, i.e. a “Miss” or young woman. It was jarring. I felt insulted.

Now, I love it.

I am a full-grown woman. A fresh-faced elder. Wholly in my powers as a human and artist.

I walk in my own footsteps and those of women I admire. Women who live boldly, independently, curiously. I am always looking for role models and examples, especially older women who forged their own paths and stayed true to themselves.

I studied French art and literature in university, including a year in southern France. Hugo, Verlaine, Picasso, Rimbaud, Matisse, Cézanne, Godard, and so on — writers and painters and sculptors and filmmakers. Impressionists, New Wavers, Cubists. It has somehow taken me all these years to realize that I only learned about… men.

Where were the women? They were mentioned as muses, wives, assistants — not artists in their own rights. Simone de Beauvoir, Dora Maar, Camille Claudel, Catherine Deneuve.

Why oh why was I not taught about Agnès Varda!? Photographer and director? Icon of the French New Wave and contemporary of Godard and Truffault?

I will make up for lost time.

I must make up for lost time.

And graciously, Paris continues to offer me treasures. This time, through a glorious exhibition I saw last week at Musée Carnavalet — Le Paris d’Agnès Varda (Agnès Varda’s Paris).