Inside and Outside
Words and Images by Marie Baum
This photo essay reflects on the dialogue between inside and outside — a relationship that seems to deepen with the arrival of autumn and, later, winter.
As the days grow shorter, the air turns cooler, and the light softens, the contrast between the fading outdoors and the glowing warmth within becomes ever more vivid.
Interiors transform into spaces of reverie, sensation, and projection. Restaurants, cafés, and boutiques — aglow and exposed to the street — invite us to step inside, to enter another world, to suspend the passing of time.
Through the windows of homes and apartments, fleeting glimpses reveal fragments of hidden lives. Each detail, each gesture, becomes a clue — a piece of a puzzle we will never complete.
This season, this particular kind of light and air gives rise to a deeply sensory experience. It nurtures a sense of quiet connection between people, through the intimacy radiating from these places, these scenes in which we remain invisible witnesses.
And it opens, finally, onto an endless realm of imagination: that of all the lives we will never enter, yet whose settings linger behind every pane of glass.
Marie Baum is a 31-year-old French photographer and writer. Her work flows from a love of poetry and an acute sensitivity to the small, often overlooked details that shape our perception of the world. Her images capture fleeting emotions — like memories that never truly happened, yet feel familiar, intimate, and entirely your own. She breathes life into textures and light, seeking the beauty of imperfection and the warmth of the analog, rather than the sleekness of the digital.
Driven by wanderlust and a profound search for authenticity, she writes about feelings, encounters, and the wonder sparked by nature — everything she senses as meaningful, that can resonate with the human heart. You will often find her sitting at a café table, scribbling in a notebook, listening to music, or to the sound of the wind. She also loves tiramisu.