I've never been good at saying no. - Patrick Modiano

He thought a photograph was nothing; that he should blend into the surroundings and become invisible, the better to work and capture –as he said natural light. One shouldn’t even hear the click of Rolleiflex. He would have liked to conceal his camera. The death of his friend Robert Capa could in fact be explained, as he saw it, by this desire, the giddiness of blending into the surrounding once and for all.

You can lose yourself or disappear in a big city. You can even change your identity and live a new life. You can indulge in a very long investigation to find a trace of malice, starting only with one or two addresses in an isolated neighbourhood. I have always been fascinated by the short note that sometimes appears on search records: Last known address. Themes of disappearance, identity and the passing of time are closely bound up with the topography of cities. That is why since the 19th century, cities have been the territory of novelists, and some of the greatest of them are linked to a single city: Balzac and Paris,Dickens and London, Dostoyevsky and Saint Petersburg, Tokyo and Nagai Kafū, Stockholm and Hjalmar Söderberg.

Ever since my childhood, I had seen my father carrying so many bags- suitcases with false bottoms , leather satchels or overnight bags, even those black briefcases that gave him a false air of repectability…. And I never knew just what was in them. ( 52 )