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

The same sign, seen from a step further back. Now the black girders of the tower crowd into the upper third, crossing each other at hard angles, and the framed advertisement floats smaller among them, ICI PHOTO-EXPRESS and its arrow still promising. Beneath it, under the curve of the balustrade, a pair of shoes and an inch of trouser: all that stays visible of whoever is standing there.

I climb, and someone has been here before me with a camera and a plan. The tower is a machine for producing views, and the views have been photographed so thoroughly that arriving can feel like checking. Masats printed this one himself and printed it dark, so the iron reads as silhouette and the little picture of Paris glows inside its frame like a lit window.

What stays with me is the pair of shoes. A person came up all those stairs and the frame has kept only their footing. That seems right. We go to such places in order to see, and the seeing has been done for us in advance; what remains genuinely ours is the standing, the tiredness, the fact of having been on the metal.