Ramón Masats Spanish, 17/03/1931–4/03/2024

On a platform of the Eiffel Tower a framed photograph hangs from the ironwork: two women posing at the parapet with Paris spread out behind them, and across it, in white letters, ICI PHOTO-EXPRESS, with an arrow that says HERE. Below the sign is the platform itself, its riveted curve and its metal grating, and a woman walking. The sign cuts her off at the waist. We are left with a skirt and two shoes.

So the advertisement holds the complete picture and the world holds the incomplete one. The two women inside the frame have their view, their outfits and their moment; the actual visitor has been beheaded by the offer of it. Masats found the joke already assembled and only had to stand in the one place from which it could be seen.

This is what the souvenir trade sells, and what it costs. Before you have looked at Paris you have been shown the photograph you are about to be sold, and the photograph is better lit than the afternoon. I distrust the sign and I distrust my own pleasure in the trick, and the picture is content to leave me there, halfway up, between the image and the place it claims to be of.