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In an interview, Robert Doisneau said, "I am photographing little scraps of time."
Unlike Doisneau, my photographs reflect the timelessness of France, rather than little scraps of it. I remember
vividly standing below a fresco in a tiny church in the Loire Valley. It stood at a crossroads of eight houses and a café; that’s all there was to the village. The church was
designed by an Armenian master builder who walked there from Armenia. When it was consecrated in 805, Charlemagne stood and marveled at its golden mosaic. Almost 1200 years later I stood
in that same spot and marveled at what was left of it. 1200 years! That’s a lot of scraps of time.
Perhaps because I come from a country only a few centuries old, I’m fascinated by the bits and pieces of France that
underline the passage of time. Especially as so much has changed since I first moved to Paris in 1968. The scenes in my photographs are bottles cast into the sea of history, bringing a
message - not of far-away places - but of far-distant times. Times that speak to us through a beauty that transcends the passing of the years. They are glimpses of what people long-passed
thought was beautiful, or important, or cherished. And perhaps reminders of what links us to a world that has disappeared.
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