SOLVED! Spoiler - Claude sent me here! Says you guys will be much better!
The woman in this photo is my best friend. She passed away, and I'm going back to Paris this October and want to recreate the shot on the same bench, holding her picture. I can't work out where it was taken and I'd really love to find it.
Paris, March 1995. Here's everything I've been able to pin down.
What the photo shows, working outward from the bench:
- Sandy gravel path, two standard green Paris park benches, a large tree trunk at the left edge
- Lawn edged with green diamond-mesh hoop fencing, with two big clipped cone yews
- A green cast-iron litter bin, flared and ribbed like a trumpet
- A curved pansy bed, then a black metal railing
- A wide paved promenade with a lot of people walking on it
- The ground then steps down in terraces. A low stone retaining wall with a clipped hedge, then a lower shaded level with planting and a grass slope, with someone walking down there
- A pale stone wall, and what looks like a stone urn on a plinth
- Then a tree-lined street or quai with parked vehicles, something yellow, and a red vehicle
- A long continuous row of five and six storey pale stone Haussmann-era buildings with mansard roofs, dormers, blank firewall gables, and one clearly chamfered corner building where a side street meets the frontage
- A tall ornate dark green Parisian candelabra lamppost with a verdigris bronze top, right at the garden's edge
Two clues that should narrow it:
The garden is terraced, stepping down away from the camera, not a flat square. And the building facades are lit with the sun behind the camera, so the buildings sit roughly north of the garden.
Context from the same scrapbook:
We stayed at 11 bis Rue Mazagran, 75010, near Bonne Nouvelle, 10 to 17 March 1995. Afternoons were free, and the low warm light means late afternoon. Dated tickets put us at: Forum des Halles (Fri 10), Notre-Dame, Louvre and Sainte-Chapelle (Sat 11), Musée d'Orsay and Les Invalides (Sun 12), Chartres (Mon 13), Opéra Garnier and Galeries Lafayette (Tue 14), Hard Rock Cafe and Rue de Rivoli (Wed 15).
Already ruled out (checked against photos and Street View): Square du Vert-Galant, Promenade Pereire, Buttes-Chaumont, Parc Monceau, Jardin des Tuileries, Square Louise Michel below Sacré-Coeur, and the Luxembourg's Boulevard Saint-Michel edge. Google Lens returns only generic Paris squares, no exact or visual match.
Thank you in advance!
