A stairwell in a hotel somewhere in Paris. It was cheap and in an arrondissement unknown to tourists, where the walk at night from the Métro took me past bars full of cigarette-smoking locals, who watched silently. Around the corner, the glass telephone box had recently been smashed and an alleyway below a back window was littered with used condoms, probably discarded by the prostitutes who hung around street corners.
Sometimes I come across negatives in my archive which seem unpromising at first sight. Then, after scanning them and fiddling with them in Photoshop for a while, their true beauty comes through. This is the kind of image I strive for whenever I take photographs. It reminds me powerfully of the work of one of my favourite photographers, Jeanloup Sieff.
