Box of Broken Dreams: In Search of a Soul Lost and Found in L.A.

In late October, I received a package containing a CD with Nicolas’ art photos, haunting takes of Skid Row and its surroundings. I asked Nicolas if he had prints of the photos he’d sent me. He told me to contact a girlfriend here in Los Angeles, and that she would have the prints. I called her and told her what Nicolas had said. There was a long pause.

“Why would he say I have them?” she asked.

Nicolas Garnier

Through a lens darkly: L.A. in black and white, photographed by Nicolas Garnier

Anne Fishbein

The box

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• Hollywood
• Nicolas Garnier
• CD Nicolas
• Lucky Luke
• Mariposa

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“I don’t know,” I said. “He just gave me your name and number and said you would have his prints.”

There was another pause.

“A lot of people have them,” she said softly.

“Okay, but do you have them?” I pressed.

There was another uncomfortable pause.

“Everyone has them now because I put them out in the street in a box with all his stuff and saw people picking through the box,” she replied, with polite but repressed anger.

I asked if she was his girlfriend.

“Ex-girlfriend,” she said pointedly. She then told me that she would make some phone calls on my behalf to try to secure the prints. I never heard back from her.

Around Christmastime, in response to some questions from me, Nicolas e-mailed again. He wrote that the difficult time with his girlfriend “was a transition period for me, trying to get away from restaurant jobs, and moving up to something I care about. We were living together for three month at her place, but I knew she doesn’t like a man who doesn’t have control on his life. That period of no jobs and no money got on her nerves, so she kicked me out, I guess to test my ability to survive!!!!”

Nicolas said he is currently living in Toulouse, working on a friend’s house and doing temp work in restaurants. He stopped doing hard drugs two years ago and no longer drinks, but he still smokes pot. His mom is well, but “my dad passed away this past April at 69 years old.”

I asked him about his dreams, why he had come here. “The future,” he replied. “America always looked to me as a country in the making, regarding human experience on Earth. Always trying, never knowing. Just going forward. And the people power, as an individual, is the greatest on Earth. The spirit is there, definitely!!!!”

Nicolas added that he was arranging for a visa and hoped to be back in L.A. in February or March.

I can’t wait to meet him.