Notre-Dame de Paris is, of course, one of the monumental buildings of the world. Completed in 1260 after a century of work, the building endured the tribulations of the centuries with grace, and met its greatest challenge on 15 April 2019, with the outbreak of a fire that imperiled its structural integrity. Since the summer of that year, reconstruction work has proceeded, and Notre-Dame is on schedule to reopen by December 2024.
In the winter of 2023-2024, the sight—the spectacle, in fact—of Notre-Dame's reconstruction was completely captivating to me, both for what the building actually looked like and the ways it seemed liberated it from its own iconicity. The sequence of photographs here, in effect an ekphrasis, contemplates the ways Notre-Dame circulates in visual culture, and how else—for the future—it might be given image.
Paris, 2024
