My desire as a photographer is to meet and tell people in their privacy. I am passionate about people, their lives, and their way of life forever.

Having lived for a long time on the top floor under the eaves of a building of the eighteenth district, it is with emotion that I met the person who was going to be at the origin of this subject, Sofia that I photographed in the framework of an article for online media. After this interview, I wanted to meet her longer, to know her a little more. Her story, her living conditions and the interior of her room touched me.

My question was then who lived in these maid rooms, what lives had they lived? What had happened to them? Why did they live in such a small, high dwelling?

Behind these pretty windows nestled at the top of Parisian buildings, like nightlights under the tin roofs, are hidden stories of incredible lives, but also difficult and sometimes disastrous living conditions.

There are more than 100,000 service rooms in the capital. Bourgeois buildings built from 1830 to 1914 usually have one or two floors traditionally reserved for servants and served by a separate staircase called “service”.
These are precarious dwellings, hidden at the top of the bourgeois Haussmanian buildings of the richest districts of Paris. Living conditions are difficult. The rooms are small, from 8 to 10 m2, little maintained for the most part, poorly insulated, at the mercy of cold winter and heat summer. Often there is no lift, ride the races on the 6th or 7th floor is a real pain.

Temporary housing, for students of course, but also for people living in difficult circumstances who have deprived them of sufficient income (illness, loss of employment, separation, debts). Many are unhealthy, some homeowners taking advantage of people in trouble to rent indecent housing.

At a time when we try to regulate the price of Parisian rents, and where the City of Paris plans to transform the rooms of maid into social housing, I went to meet their occupants. See who lived there, what were their living conditions, and know a little about their history.

I started this work in 2016 and completed the last shots in July 2017. I have been in contact with a youth reintegration association on the street, the Corot Center, which houses the most autonomous young people in small maid’s rooms in the 16th arrondissement. This project was not subject to any exhibition and no article.

Alice Beuvelet