Brooke Windsor was walking past Notre Dame when she saw a scene that seemed perfect to her: a man was swinging a little girl through the air, and the two of them were looking at each other and smiling.
She took the photo at 5:57 p.m. Paris time. The fire started at 6:50, when the cathedral was already closed to the public. After taking the photo, Windsor and her friends continued on their way to the Louvre. She later said that she had almost approached the father to ask if he wanted the picture.
She didn’t. That night, as the world watched the spire and much of the roof collapse, she posted the photo on Twitter with a phrase that summed up her regret: now she wished she had. She asked for help finding the man. The tweet received more than 460,000 likes and 200,000 shares.
On Thursday, April 18, 2019, she wrote: “The search is over! The photo reached the father and his family”. He contacted her on Twitter, asked to remain anonymous, and left her a message: “Thanks again for that beautiful photo. We’ll find a special place for it”.