While everyone is donning costumes and indulging on over-priced candy, we’re just out here in Paris, tryna photograph la Tour Eiffel in the Champs de Mars. Truly, this was one of those moments in my life where I experienced what it was like to actualize a dream. The Eiffel Tower is literally the most recognizable symbol in the world, but to actually see it in real life, in front of my very eyes, towering forth, dripping with history, was absolutely breathtaking. Completely stunning. Overwhelming. It is ironic that before construction began on this iconic structure, a batch of Parisian Creatives were completely in opposition to its building:
“We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower; to bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years, we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal”
As they say, sometimes what you do can be deemed a monstrosity, a departure from the norm and a seeming disrespect to history, but it can truly become iconic. Remember the Eiffel Tower the next time anybody questions your good intentions.
