“It was spontaneous. I wanted to do something that could be useful for people”. A few hours after Jullien posted the image to his Instagram account, Instagram shared the image to its 113 million followers with credit to the artist. “It was then quite an easy thing to combine it with the Eiffel Tower, the symbol of Paris”, he added.
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Since Friday, people retweeted “Peace for Paris” almost 60,000 times, liked it 160,000 times on Instagram, and liked it 24,000 times on Facebook.
“I express myself visually, so my first reaction was to draw a symbol of peace for Paris”, Jullien told TIME Saturday. “So I just sort of started checking on my friends and family through social media, and everybody was saying “I’m OK”, Jullien told Slate via Skype.
Before the names and faces of the victims of Friday’s terrorist attack in Paris emerged, there was one unifying symbol. Sometimes it is hard to shed light on what is true or not, but I think people have an instinctive sense of how to use these forms of communication. “However, it really shows that this is how we communicate not just as humans, but as a society”.
“It’s this sort of moment where you don’t necessarily try to understand everything coherently”.
He revealed that the shock, sadness and anger led him to summarize his feelings – but he didn’t realise how much it would resonate with others.
The landmark reopened to visitors Monday after being shut for two days after the Paris gun and bomb attacks that killed 129 people.
Hundreds of Americans are offering their homes to French travelers who are stuck in the United States. “Is it true that France is at war?” asks Julie, aged 8.
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The deadliest attack on Europe since the 2004 Madrid bombings laid bare Islamic State’s capability to strike at the heart of Europe and the difficulty of monitoring the movements of militants intent on killing. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that French policy had contributed to the “spread of terrorism” that culminated in the Paris attacks.
