The Viral Search for the Dad and His Little Girl Photographed Outside of Notre Dame Is Over

Photo credit: Twitter / Brooke Windsor
Photo credit: Twitter / Brooke Windsor

From Oprah Magazine

  • A photo taken of what appears to be a father playing with his little girl outside Notre Dame Cathedral has gone viral

  • The picture was snapped by a tourist roughly an hour before the Cathedral caught fire. She's asking Twitter to help her find the dad so she can share the picture.


UPDATE: The search for the dad playing with his child outside of Notre Dame before it was set ablaze on April 15 is over. Thanks to nearly 230,000 retweets and 474,000 likes, the sweet photo has reached the father.

"He has chosen to remain anonymous in the wake of tragedy, and writes: “Thanks again for that beautiful photo, we will find a special place for it.” Thank you to everyone who has shared the picture and for your kind words," Brooke Windsor, the American tourist who snapped the photo, shared on Twitter.


Just a few moments before the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught fire-causing devastating destruction-a tourist captured a joyful moment on camera outside of the iconic landmark. 23-year-old Brooke Windsor from Michigan snapped a sweet photo of what seems to be a father and his little girl playing. Now, she's turning to Twitter for help finding the pair so they might have this happy keepsake.

"Twitter if you have any magic, help him find this," Windsor wrote in a post that's been shared nearly 160,000 times.

She explained in her Twitter comments that after taking the pic, she thought about sending it to the person she presumed was the dad-but she said that she wasn't certain what the relationship was between the duo. It was "simply the dynamic I observed from them while debating on interrupting this moment," that led her to believe it was a father and daughter.

"If it were me, I'd want the memory. Hoping he feels the same way," Windsor added, regarding her decision to tweet the pic.

Roughly an hour after she captured this blissful instant, she told the BBC she "watched in shock and heartbreak with the rest of Paris," as the beloved Cathedral, built in the 12th and 13 centuries, burned.

Twitter is suggesting that this photo encapsulates life-how one moment, everything can be so serene, and the next, chaos can strike. Others say that, like the Cathedral itself, the photo also offers a beacon of hope.

While prominent artifacts have been destroyed, and the holy place may never return to its former glory, several French tycoons-including CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault-announced that he'd be donating at least 200 million euros toward restoration efforts. And French president Emmanuel Macron assured the country that he was committed to rebuilding as well. He said in a statement to Reuters yesterday, "Notre-Dame is burning, and I know the sadness, and this tremor felt by so many fellow French people. But tonight, I’d like to speak of hope, too. Let’s be proud, because we built this cathedral more than 800 years ago, we’ve built it and, throughout the centuries, let it grow and improved it. So I solemnly say tonight: we will rebuild it together."


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