2016 · 35mm Film Photography / FM2 · Paris, France
After saying goodbye to everyone in Frankfurt,
I traveled alone to my dream city — Paris.
For years, Paris had lived in my imagination.
In high school, my art teacher told us stories about French painters, museums, and Fontainebleau.
Those names once felt distant and mythical, like places that only existed in textbooks.
But now, I was finally there.
Originally, I planned to visit the Louvre first.
But it was Tuesday — closed.
So I followed the map and walked to the nearest museum instead: Musée d’Orsay.
Ironically, it hadn’t even been on my list.
And yet, as someone deeply shaped by Impressionism, this place — almost a sanctuary for the painters I loved — had been waiting for me all along.
Inside, everything felt slow and quiet.
There were moments when I almost cried.
Paintings I had studied for years.
Works I had taught countless times.
Images I knew by heart.
And suddenly — they were right in front of me.
Not reproductions.
Not slides.
But real surfaces. Real textures. Real brushstrokes.
Breathing.
This photograph was taken during one of those pauses.
It is the back of a sculpture by Edgar Degas — one of his ballet dancers.
A simple ribbon tied around her hair.
Visitors moving softly in the background.
Degas spent his life observing the body — not as performance, but as presence.
The weight of a shoulder, the angle of a spine, the quiet moment between movements.
Standing there, I didn’t know why I felt so moved.
I just stood still and pressed the shutter.
Years later, when I began painting the human figure myself,
I realized something.
Perhaps I had already been learning how to see from him.
Not how to paint a dancer.
But how to paint a body that simply exists.
Looking back, this wasn’t just a museum visit.
This wasn’t the beginning of my artistic spirit —
that fire had long been lit by Van Gogh years before.
But here, with Degas,
I quietly learned something else:
how to look at the body,
how to see presence in stillness.
Not passion.
But perception.
Both would later meet on my canvas.
— Percy Lin