Am I in Pennsylvania…or Somewhere Else?

 Am I in Pennsylvania…or Somewhere Else?

If I showed you only the first few photographs from this drive, where would you guess I was?

Pennsylvania, perhaps?

That was certainly the thought that crossed my mind.

After all, look at that first scene: a broad highway running past harvested fields, hedgerows and a rolling landscape beneath a huge blue-and-white sky. Take away the European roadway and it could easily be somewhere along a Pennsylvania highway in late summer.

The fields especially caught my attention. They are already golden and harvested, while the trees and shrubs are beginning to show just the slightest suggestion that summer won’t last forever. Against that enormous sky, there is very little here that immediately announces, Paris.

And that was precisely what made the drive so interesting.

Wait…this doesn’t look like Paris

A little farther along, the landscape became rougher.

Dense green vegetation crowded the roadside, but below it was dry grass, bare earth and scattered litter. This certainly wasn’t the carefully manicured image of France that we tend to carry around in our imaginations.

No elegant Haussmann buildings.

No sidewalk cafés.

No flower boxes.

No Eiffel Tower peeking above the rooftops.

Just an ordinary roadside.

And then came this:

Graffiti stretched across a long wall beside the highway—layers of tags, large colorful letters, vines creeping over the brickwork and dry vegetation collecting along the roadside.

If your mental picture of Paris consists entirely of the Louvre, Notre-Dame and cafés in Saint-Germain, this photograph might require a little recalibration.

But this is part of Paris, too—or more precisely, part of the urban landscape surrounding it.

The road signs finally give it away

Then I photographed a sign.

And suddenly the mystery begins to unravel.

A86. Bobigny. Meaux. Paris–Porte de Pantin. Bondy. Noisy-le-Sec.

Okay.

We’re definitely not in Pennsylvania anymore.

Those signs belong to the complicated network of autoroutes and major roads surrounding Paris. We were moving through the northeastern suburbs, heading toward the city.

And that is the reveal:

These photographs were taken during my drive from Charles de Gaulle Airport into Paris.

I had just arrived in France, and instead of immediately being greeted by the romantic Paris of postcards, I was getting a much more interesting introduction—the working edges of a huge metropolitan area.

Paris has an industrial skyline, too

Soon the landscape became unmistakably urban.

Two enormous dark towers appeared against that spectacular blue sky. The signs at their tops read LES MERCURIALES.

The towers rise in Bagnolet, on the eastern side of Paris, and are among the most recognizable modern landmarks outside the historic center. Their dark glass and severe geometry make quite a contrast with the Paris most visitors expect to see.

In front of them is an entirely different layer of the city: a modest modern building, highway barriers, streetlights and traffic.

It isn’t postcard Paris.

But photographically, I find the contrast fascinating.

Green space hiding between the highways

One of the things I kept noticing was how quickly the scenery changed.

At one moment there were towers and graffiti. At another, the view opened onto mature trees and what appeared almost like a pocket of woodland tucked among the transportation infrastructure.

Then there is that enormous red-and-white circular traffic sign dominating the foreground.

It isn’t beautiful in the traditional sense, but it makes an interesting photograph because the brilliant red circle becomes a graphic counterpoint to all that green foliage and blue sky.

These are the kinds of scenes you notice when you aren’t looking only for landmarks.

Paris is building

Then the cranes appeared.

This photograph may be my favorite document of the drive because there is so much happening in it.

Two enormous construction cranes stretch across the sky. Below them is a building very much in progress—scaffolding, exposed concrete, temporary red forms and construction fencing.

Behind everything is that wonderful, dramatic French sky.

There is something important about this scene.

We tend to think of Paris as a finished city.

We imagine buildings that have stood for centuries, monuments protected behind stone walls and neighborhoods whose appearance seems almost permanent.

But Paris isn’t finished at all.

It is still building, demolishing, replacing and reinventing itself.

And then the city begins

By the final photograph, the transformation is obvious.

The open fields are gone.

The roadside brush is gone.

Now buildings fill the frame—modern apartment blocks and offices of different heights, materials and architectural styles crowded together beneath a sky that has suddenly become much darker.

We’re approaching the dense urban fabric of Paris.

And I love that this photograph doesn’t show the Paris everyone expects.

There is no Eiffel Tower.

No Arc de Triomphe.

No Seine.

Instead, there are apartments, offices, highways and a delivery van—the infrastructure of a city where millions of people actually live and work.

So…Pennsylvania or Paris?

Looking back through these photographs, I rather like that the answer isn’t immediately obvious.

My arrival in Paris didn’t begin with a grand monument.

It began with fields.

Then weeds.

Graffiti.

Highways.

Road signs.

Office towers.

Construction cranes.

Apartment buildings.

And gradually, almost frame by frame, the countryside and outer suburbs gave way to one of the world’s great cities.

There would be plenty of time for the beautiful Paris I had come to see and photograph.

But on this first drive from Charles de Gaulle Airport into the city, Paris showed me something else first:

the part of itself that isn’t on the postcards.

Pricing: Taxi to the area 65€