Recently I was lucky enough to have a free apartment in the very bourgeois Marais area of Paris. As a fairly impoverished artist from Australia, I’m extremely grateful for such an opportunity, made possible by a government grant. While Paris certainly lives up to it’s glam reputation, it’s been particularly heartbreaking to see the huge number of highly visible homeless people around the city, many living semi-nomadically in tents and with shopping trolleys containing a few possessions. Adding a tarnished dimension to the “city of love”.