When I was told we'd be seeing Notre Dame around Christmas I was hoping to see them lose in a low-tier bowl game in Florida, but ended up in Paris instead. Overall, it was probably the better trip, but much less funny.
Notre Dame de Paris fills the vertical frame with eight centuries of Gothic ambition, its twin bell towers, intricate rose window, and three deeply carved portal archways rendered in extraordinary detail against a brooding winter sky of steel and amber at the close of a December day. A decorated Christmas tree glows with blue light to the left of the facade, its festive presence somehow emphasizing rather than diminishing the cathedral's overwhelming scale, while clusters of visitors crossing the parvis below reinforce just how vast this structure truly is. The warm limestone of the facade absorbs the last of the fading light with a richness that makes every sculpted saint and gargoyle feel freshly revealed.
This photograph carries weight beyond its considerable visual beauty, capturing Notre Dame as she stood before the 2019 fire transformed her forever. For anyone who walked this parvis, stood before these portals, or simply loves one of humanity's greatest architectural achievements, this print preserves a version of Paris that now exists only in photographs and memory.
