Looking forward, looking back. Wednesday 13June - Toul

I used to go to some trouble to eliminate cars from photos involving otherwise quaint little cobbled streets and ancient buildings.  There was something intrusive about their presence that somehow conflicted with the ambience that the ancient streetscapes conjured in my mind.  Despite rumours to the contrary, the absence in that perfect world of chamber pots of sewage being thrown from upper story windows and mounds of festering horse manure on the streets should provide evidence that beyond this cool hard exterior their lurks just a teensy glimmer of a true romantic  

The reality is that cars are omnipresent, a fact of life in the present and therefore it’s probably just as important to occasionally record their place in our time, just as the inclusion of a horse or a goat or a leper perhaps might have been amusing to future generations had this photo been taken a century ago.  It’s interesting to note the age of the vehicles in question and sobering to reflect on the pace of change.  In one fell swoop of legislation and incentive, vehicles beyond a certain have gone, the battered colour of 2CV’s and Renaults which seemed to add to their surrounds are gone, replaced by shiny dark bubbles which belch far less pollutant.  Except that there are more of them, so they don’t.

In just one more decade the internal combustion engines that power them will no longer be allowed in inner city streets. In two decades they will have disappeared altogether.   When that happens, remember this photo and look back at them fondly, these dinosaurs of transportation waiting to become fossils, as you would those relics from our present past.