Local Lens: Paris outside the Postcard with @gflandre
In this series, local Instagrammers show you their favorite places to shoot around where they live. This time round we take a trip to Paris with Instagrammer @gflandre
“I like to define Paris as a ‘living cliché,’” says Instagrammer Guillaume Flandre (@gflandre). “No matter how many times I have seen the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, le Louvre or Montmartre, I still look at these landmarks with the same amazement I had as a child. Paris actually looks like a postcard.”
Away from some of Paris’s most famous and beautiful landmarks, Guillaume likes to capture moments of everyday life in Paris on Instagram and he has found that places close to his home near Canal Saint-Martin make for great shooting locations.
“This canal has everything I like in a neighborhood: lots of young people as well as great restaurants and bars, parks. It’s also a great place to take pictures of people playing basketball, riding their skateboards or partying on the quay next to amazing graffiti-covered walls—and the setting sun reflecting in the water is something I will never get tired of photographing.”
Stroll past the islands in the middle of the Seine, Île Saint-Louis and Notre Dame’s Île de la Cité, and you could find yourself in the trendy neighborhood of le Marais.
“This part of Paris kind of looks like a village in many ways,” says Guillaume. “With small parks, shops and small streets in which it’s easy to get lost. I like to go there to try to discover all the gems this neighborhood has to offer and, of course, snap pictures of it.”
Le Marais (3rd and 4th arrondissements) is full of small boutiques and cool cafés. “This part of town is particularly interesting on Sundays when streets are closed to traffic and hip Parisians like to wander around.”
For more local views of Paris, Guillaume also recommends the following Paris Instagrammers: @monsieurlam for great architecture, @ilkflottante for graffiti around the city, @oliviathebaut for minimalism and @nathparis for postcard views of the city.