City of Light: Paris
Contact Festival Toronto 2026 May 1-18, 2026
Reception: May 1, 6-9pm
Closing: May 18, 12-6pm
The Lyceum Gallery, Toronto
969 Queen Street West (at Crawford)
Gallery Open 12-6 Saturday & Sunday or by appointment
https://contactphoto.com/festival/2026/open-call/city-of-light-paris
Online Photo Gallery & prints available (via The Lyceum Gallery only)
https://thelyceumgallery.com/exhibition/city-of-light-paris/
Prints: https://thelyceumgallery.com/product/prints-from-city-of-light-paris/
City of Light: Paris
An immersive photo-based exhibition into the modern street life of Paris.
City of Light combines street scenes and images of street art to portray a different and unique view of this major European city. Step into the photo studio of a fictional Paris street photographer and how they see this iconic city. Photo paste-ups, a street photographers diary, an immersive soundscape and a large selection of over 300 mostly black & white photographs combine to portray central Paris as it is today.
Exhibition photography by Marina Dempster
Diary
City of Light: Paris
"When you stop and look it all begins."
- Annie Ernaux
When I open my eyes, I pray for light.
Beautiful light.
Earth, water, air.
We have ruined almost everything.
But light is still pure.
Magical. Eternal. Immutable.
Light is life.
I live in a City of Light. We ride our bicycles in its light.
Juillet - July
07/07
Early in the morning, Julien and I rode up to Parc de Belleville before it gets too busy and the light is still softly caressing the city below. Gentleness. Julien sketches out his ideas for the day in his notebook, and I will take another picture of the city at my feet. He calls me: ’Ma Fotoriste’.
We will have a coffee before he goes to work, and I will load a roll of film into my camera. I am never quite sure what I will do with all these images I take on grainy film. He tells me that each moment is a small history of light, of life in this city. And what I do is very honourable.
08/07
Stalingrad. Most days, I will take the Metro to a different station and slowly walk through the nearby streets observing everything around me, stop at street corners and wait. Waiting for life and its true nature to come to me, reveal itself to me. All these streets are mine in this City of Light.
I am a hunter of faces, shadows, ironies, moments & ideas. Every brick, every cobblestone, everything is patiently observed, considered and sometimes recorded inside my viewfinder, time separated by the action of a shutter. Click.
10/07
Along the boulevards, in small parks and large squares, groups of retired, under-employed and migrants pass the time in conversation. Along the canal Saint-Martin and the Seine River, families, co-workers, friends and lovers eat and drink and enjoy life together. A time of truce between strikes, protests and elections.
Locks lock hearts get broken and lock anew with new lovers attached to aching arching age-old bridges.
We wait for life to happen to us.
14/07
When the doors are open. I simply walk in. A man facing the wall behind a desk, working with his back to work toward me. Behind the gates that separate us, I find common ground. Some have everything. Many have nothing. Some just want another day and the warmth of the light to be there for them. For others darkness becomes a welcome friend. In the early evenings after work or idleness, people assemble in the corner, cafes, bistros and restaurants. The rich, the young, the beautiful, the friends and the soon to be strangers again. They spill out onto the side streets, driving and laughing. Shiny gasoline kaleidoscopes of longing.
15/07
I return home and rewind the film. Place the cartridges back in the black plastic container. Label them by date, arrondissement, Metro stop. I look out the window.
I remember, remembered today. It feels good. I keep a daybook of places and small stories, observations, weather information and an old cigar box with little things I found along my walks. A leaf. A lost shopping list. A graffiti sticker I liked and stole. A piece of string.
19/07
There are promises. Promises accompanied by long embraces. And even longer shadows and the sound of bicycle chains, freewheels and bells. Echoes of children laughing. I file everything away in memories and preserve it all in black & white on film. Grayscale tones, salt and pepper. Sharp edges and soft textures. And then there is the quiet, humble dignity of the women of Paris. The one with a cloth shopping bag in her left hand. Hunched over a little crossing the busy street between tourist infested streets or vanishing into thin air at the end of an alley.
20/07
Julien always smiles when I show him the first proof prints. Prints that I excitedly bring home from the photo lab and lay out on the table. “I know this corner”, he says, “I swear”. “I have seen this person before.” I don't always believe him. I tease him about it. Challenge him to name the street and the place. Paris is such a big city. But I give him the benefit of the doubt. Observing him as he flips through the shots, every now and then he will pause over an image and be silent. I know then that it is a good one.
22/07
If you have been to the city of light, you have seen these moments. In colour or in black or white, as I see them. Often, I see everything in black and white. I practically dream in monochrome. But you don't remember these moments as they pass you by. If you go to this city, you will see them if you allow yourself to look. To pause for a moment. If you have never been to Paris. You could be there now if you close your eyes after looking at my photographs and daydream a little. These images are not just what my eyes saw, it is what we saw. In the streets and along the Boulevards, the canals, the river, in the park, on the street corners and in the Metro. It is our manifesto. A manifesto for a life in this city. Any city really. In a not-so-subtle way, this city is our manifesto. A manifesto for the right to live. To life. To living together.
25/07
The fact that I took the time to take these photographs is not important. The only thing that really matters is that you are viewing them now. One by one. One moment at a time. Does the nature of love change? Does the rain on your skin? Or the sun in your eyes? Moon above you? A friend's touch?
29/07
Julien sketches the world into his notebook. To him, the city is not just where he lives. Lucky to live, he will add. It is where he chooses to share his life with everyone.
The young person painted on the wall beside him is reading a book. We are alone again on the outlook from Parc de Belleville. Below they are alone too in a city of 11 million. It is all about being present in the city. The city or place where you live.
I am just a person with a camera. And a great friend beside me as we roam the city on our bicycles and eat at night by the Canal. But there are others. A senior and mathematician at a desk. A mother, father, child, a couple, a teacher. Moving along, working. A food delivery gig worker. A homeless man. A woman beggar in the Metro. A street artist, migrants. A shop owner, police officers. A book seller, a musician. A pet, a cat, a dog, a bartender, a waiter. A foreign family on vacation. A subway rider. Pigeons, the shadow of bicycle. An old hotel. A simple reflection in a puddle. A cloud, a sign. A shopping bag. A slogan. So much street art. Rain glowing on the sidewalk at night outside the Metro. There's a vegetable stand. And a fish monger. A photo booth full of lovers. A bare empty street. The poor, the chess players, the reader, the businesswoman. The reader, the old men on a bench. A big murky river. A bookshop, a gallery. A hidden passage. A little forest. A square. A grave, A Kiss.
My city of life. My City of Light: a love song to people living together. Repeated yet new.
30/07
But he is also the patient one. As I stop my bicycle on the street to take another photograph. Wait, one more. Just one more. In the corner of my eye, I saw something. The way, the morning light is reflected in the window. Or the faces of people coming out of the Metro. I stopped suddenly to take I stopped suddenly brake pads squealing. He stops slowly looking back at me. I get out the old Nikon camera from my knapsack and hold it to compose the shot. Inside the viewfinder there is another world, my world in black and white. Instant, fleeting elusive, decisive silver memories. Life is so beautiful, preserved in negatives and held up to the light. A split second, a 1/60th or 1/500th of a second. Catching light with a butterfly net in the shape of a shutter.
31/07
I forgot to tell you about emotion. I forgot to tell you how I feel when I depress the shutter button. But I will not. That is your job. That is why you are here. To see, to feel, to share these images with me.
This is not just my story. It is our story, our life. Together. In black and white, with a splash of colour.
Alive in all shades in between. And now, let's begin.
Open your eyes wide. Look closer.
Make me disappear.
Until you become the photograph.
Bienvenue.
Credits & Thank Yous
City of Light: Paris
May 1-18, 2026
The Lyceum Gallery | www.thelyceumgallery.com
Special thank you to Holly Venable, Sam Higgs, Wendy Lucas & Todd Parsons & Jode Roberts
Martin Reis | www.tino.ca | IG: @mister._.rain
Paris 2014-2025
Fictional diary by Martin Reis
Soundscape (96 min. reproduced on Grundig TK247 reel to reel tape machine)
Piano: Martin Reis | Recorded by James Anderson
Paris protests and transit sounds: Michel Kristof
Archival Paris street recordings: BBC & Archive.org
Postcard and poster designs by Studio:Blackwell
