Notre Dame de Paris

ENGLISH // Notre-Dame de Paris — Rebirth of Details

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On April 15, 2019, Notre-Dame de Paris went up in flames before the eyes of the world. In just a few hours, the millennia-old cathedral—an emblem of Paris and of French history—was deeply wounded. The spire collapsed, the roof structure vanished, and with it a fragile part of our collective memory.

This photographic series was born in the aftermath of the fire, over the years of restoration that followed. It does not seek to show the cathedral in its monumentality, but rather to linger on what is rarely looked at:
stones restored one by one,
sculpted wood reborn,
ornaments cleaned, repaired, recreated identically,
the marks of time respected—sometimes visible, sometimes erased.

Through these restored details, a story of patience, craftsmanship, and transmission unfolds. Each image bears witness to the meticulous work of the artisans—stonecutters, carpenters, metalworkers, master glassmakers—who brought the building back to life, gesture by gesture.

Photographing these fragments is a way of telling a silent rebirth. A reconstruction that does not seek to erase the fire, but to inscribe it within the long history of Notre-Dame: that of a monument that has endured centuries, revolutions, and wars, and that continues, even today, to rise again.

This series is an invitation to look differently. To slow down. To observe the details.
For it is often in the infinitely small that true grandeur is found.​