Illustrator's 'anti-postcards' capture Paris heat wave's toll on the homeless

As Paris settles into cooler autumn weather, the memory of France's hottest summer lingers — not only in official records but in the drawings of illustrator Marina Antonova.

Paris is celebrated worldwide for its beauty, yet in recent months it drew attention for a different reason: temperatures on its streets climbed past 40 C (104 F), setting records.

In a series titled "Chronicles of a Heating Planet," Antonova portrays a city under severe heat stress and the disproportionate burden carried by its homeless residents. Her drawings show people hunched forward in despair, clinging to their knees, or curled up on pavements in apparent defeat.

"The heat wave made it so much worse," Antonova said in an interview at the Paris apartment where she produced much of the work. "Usually winter is the hardest part for homeless people; now we have a situation where both winter and summer are horrific."

She described the contrast between office workers in air-conditioned buildings and homeless people sleeping outside those same offices. "I cannot imagine how people survived," said Antonova, 37.

Since arriving in France from Russia four years ago, Antonova has moved between temporary accommodations, often coping with difficult living conditions, mental stress and limited money. The suffering she witnessed on the streets resonated with her, along with frustration at being unable to help more.

Winter, she noted, can be eased with blankets, but heat offers no such remedy when daytime and night-time temperatures remain punishing. "You bring them water and ice but it never stops," she said.

Her choice of colour reflects what she calls the bullying behaviour of an "overpowering sun." "In my images there is a lot of yellow, an acid color," she said. "Usually you associate the sun with something nice, this year it was very different for everyone. It felt very aggressive and dangerous, there were also fires around the country."

Other drawings depict animals disoriented in burning forests, including deer that run toward fire because no direction offers escape. "What happens to beauty when the landscape itself turns hostile?" Antonova asks, pointing to wildfires across southern Europe and, in July, a fire in the forest of Fontainebleau at the edge of Paris. A historic blaze near Bordeaux forced many people from their homes, while Italy, Spain and other European countries also endured extreme temperatures.

France recorded at least 7,200 more deaths than usual during successive heat waves this year, according to the national public health agency, based on statistical modelling using data from previous years.

Antonova said the series examines what everyday life looks like when climate change is no longer a prediction but a permanent condition. "These paintings are not illustrations of a single event," she said. "They are observations of a future that has already arrived."

The heat's effect on daily life made Paris difficult to navigate on foot. An artist friend in Russia, shown the drawings, remarked that she would never visit Paris after seeing them. "We called this series 'anti-postcards,'" Antonova said. "The kind of postcards where you don't want to go to the place. It's a kind of sad joke."

She suggested future heat waves could deter visitors from the city's popular attractions. "In five or 10 years Paris could get so hot people might not want to go here, not in summer, anyway," she said, adding that the series let her view familiar places from a new, more sinister angle.

Antonova works on an iPad, often from photographs taken on her phone across the city. "Since I became an immigrant it was difficult to organize studios every time I moved, so I started working more with digital illustration," she said. The medium, she added, offers immediacy that allows her to respond to news events faster than traditional painting would.