This is one of my earlier photo projects which is at the beginning of a continuing condition for me of seeking opportunities when I've run against problems. In this case it was a technical problem. I was in Paris for a year without much money and my camera broke. The shutter speed was completely unreliable. Being that this was during the Winter when it's quite gray in Paris the most interesting light for me was at night. So I went out and took long exposure photos. Sometimes the shutter closed after two seconds, sometimes ten seconds. At night that didn't make a huge difference for the photos. I quickly became interested by the unpredictable that could result from handheld exposures and this became the signature for this series until I introduced some localized flash a year later.