Daily Photo – Wandering the Les Pâquis District

Digging through an old archive from twenty-four years ago is a dangerous game. You stumble across frames from a past life that your memory has completely let go of. Case in point: a gritty, textured photograph of a magnificent corner building in Geneva that I simply couldn’t place. Any memory of standing there had long since evaporated, leaving behind only an image of heavy stone blocks and a stack of wrought-iron balconies.

A bit of modern digital detective work eventually cracked the mystery. The building stands at 55 Rue de Lausanne, on the corner of Rue du Môle in Geneva’s Les Pâquis district. It’s a handsome survivor from the late nineteenth century, built during the city’s expansion after the old medieval walls came down.

Looking at it now, I discovered that the ground-floor premises are occupied by a barber shop that has been operating there since 1932. The truth is, I can’t remember a thing about taking the photograph nearly a quarter of a century ago, but there’s something deeply satisfying about knowing this sturdy mountain of a building is still standing watch over the same intersection today.

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