"Many Americans have another country living inside them.
I found my country through my stomach. It was France from the first time I ate steak pommes frites at a family restaurant near the Hotel de Seine in Paris where I lived for two years.
But though France was my other country, Paris was not my city.
That came many years later, in 1998, when I spent a week in Marseille. There they were , all my people, a lively mix of hustlers, gifted shoplifters, soulful artists, witty fishmongers and sports-crazed fans, an urban cocktail of Europeans, Arabs, Sicilians, Africans and who knows whats. This was more like it."
—Joan Liftin
Marseille (2015)
"Many Americans have another country living inside them.
I found my country through my stomach. It was France from the first time I ate steak pommes frites at a family restaurant near the Hotel de Seine in Paris where I lived for two years.
But though France was my other country, Paris was not my city.
That came many years later, in 1998, when I spent a week in Marseille. There they were , all my people, a lively mix of hustlers, gifted shoplifters, soulful artists, witty fishmongers and sports-crazed fans, an urban cocktail of Europeans, Arabs, Sicilians, Africans and who knows whats. This was more like it."
—Joan Liftin
Joan Liftin
Joan Liftin has worked as a photographer, photo book editor and teacher for many years. She is the author of three photo books Drive-Ins (2004), Marseille (2015) and Water For Tears (2018). Liftin was Chair of the Documentary Program at the International Center of Photography (from l988 to 2000) and the Director of Magnum Photos library.
