Brunch reservation was 10 minutes away and S hasn’t arrived yet either. Not one to stand outside a café idly, I took a short stroll along rue Bichat and see what may be hidden on this street, in a neighbourhood that I don’t know very well. Not that I got very far though; I didn’t even get to peek into the windows of Helmut Newcake, the only other address I know a bit further along this street.

As I hurried back, I wistfully pondered the prospect of returning to the small flower shop and pick up a couple of small plants after brunch. However, fate had it that F would love to pop over to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie whenever I was done, and it just wasn’t practical enough to visit a photo exhibition with my hands full. My favourite section from this visit? Grégoire Korganow’s “Prisons”.

There was something raw and powerful from this series of photographs. The topic is not one easy to deal with, and without the sort of images of smug and sinister criminals in orange jumpsuit that we’re conditioned to see on the tv, the prisoners and their visiting guests become a lot more real, the everyday you and I, who feel loneliness, resignation, anger, and everything in between. I don’t know the circumstances that brought them to these prisons, justly or not, but I was profoundly sad to see their eyes and their postures carrying so much anguish within.