So I FINALLY got around to developing the last roll of black-and-white from the trip today. Here are some odds-n-ends from the Palais de Justice. These are from the courtyard through which you exit after you visit Sainte Chapelle (you can see the spire of the chapel in the background of the lantern photo).
Not only did the lantern appeal to me, but the absolutely crazy Escher-esque layers of the building behind it just begged to be photographed. It’s like many different buildings collided and transformed into another entirely new one.
Lantern, Courtyard, Palais de Justice
This is a fencepost on an iron railing around the Palais de Justice building. I thought the sunlight passing through the outer fence casting a striped shadow on the wall behind this iron fence had an ironic feeling of multiple layers of prison at a place of justice.
Fence, Palais de Justice
These windows also had an Escher-esque quality to them because they have balance but not symmetry – again lots of angles that mimic and overlap without being truly parallel.
Windows, Palais de Justice
On the way out of the courtyard you pass by what seems to be an entrance to the Metro, all closed up. This is a block and a bit from the main entrance to the Cité metro, so it is possible this was a direct entrance to enable workers at the Palais de Justice to go directly to and from their offices. Or it could just be an underpass or an entrance to a tunnel system connecting multiple buildings in the neighborhood. I’m voting for subway entrance even though it doesn’t have the nifty bronze art nouveau surround because the lamps above the gates look like the lamps over the Cité station entrance. Any Parisian readers are more than welcome to chime in and correct me.
I thought I’d start this post off with a comparison of my 1870s photo of the Opera Garnier with the photo I took this year in 2013. Not exactly the same shot (the antique is of the left side of the facade whereas mine is of the right and middle) but I did manage to include several of the same elements.
Paris Opera albumen printFacade, Opera Garnier
I don’t know when my vintage photo was taken, but it could be as early as 1867 when the facade was unveiled. Alas, the lampposts have changed, and significantly decreased in number. I can only imagine what the plaza in front would have looked like with all those lamps lit.
This was a lucky grab of the arcaded balcony on the front when the woman wearing the red scarf just happened to be looking out.
Front Balcony, Opera Garnier
The grand staircase at the Opera Garnier was one of the highlights of the building, and considered a major attraction from the moment it opened. It has been much copied around the world. Photos of the space do not do it justice – this IS truly one of the great public rooms of the world.
Grand Stair Hall, Opera GarnierGrand Staircase, Opera Garnier
I did something a little different with this shot – I cropped it very tall and vertical. It was in part because I wanted to focus the attention on the bronze candelabra, and also to deal with some horrible flare in the right-hand side of the image coming from one of the other light fixtures in the hall.
Candelabra, Stairs, Opera Garnier
The Opera Garnier is famous for one particular chandelier (and we’ll get to that), but it houses a multiplicity of beautiful light fixtures. Here are some samples of the variety of chandeliers at the opera:
Hall Chandelier, Opera GarnierReception Hall, Opera Garnier
The salon is reminiscent of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, but if it is possible, it is even MORE over-the-top ornate than that palatial room, ceding to it only in length.
Salon, Opera Garnier
The hall itself is a candy confection of red velvet, gold leaf, and frescoed ceiling. Attending a concert here would be quite the experience – I would think you could easily be distracted from the performance by just trying to take in all the architectural details! I don’t know that this would be more sublime than my experience of the concert at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, but it would certainly be a feast for the senses.
Box Seats, Opera Garnier AuditoriumGiltwork, Ceiling, Opera Garnier
And last but not least, we get to the infamous chandelier. Perhaps the best known chandelier on the planet, this is the one around which the “Phantom of the Opera” story revolves. The ceiling, hinted at in the previous photo, is not the original ceiling design for the hall, but was painted in 1964 by Marc Chagall. It brings a modern touch to an otherwise very baroque space and the colors enliven and lighten the otherwise heavy and serious room. The chandelier weighs 7 tons. Originally it was raised through the cupola for cleaning, but now it is lowered. One of the counterweights for the chandelier crashed through the ceiling in 1896, killing an audience member, thus inspiring that part of the Phantom story. The other bit about the underground lake beneath the opera comes from the fact that there is a man-made cistern under the foundations because the ground water is so high that they needed to relieve water pressure on the foundations. It had the added benefit of providing an ample supply of water in case of fire.
Grand Chandelier, Opera Garnier
The Opera Garnier has been used for concerts and the ballet since it opened, and today it serves first and foremost as a dance space, although classical music continues to have a place in the schedule.
The Pompidou Centre is a massive modern art and culture facility in central Paris, on the western edge of the Marais district. Its architectural claim to fame is that it was designed with all its systems (heating, cooling, plumbing, visitor circulation, etc) exposed on the outside of the building, a sort of deconstruction of the notion of architecture. This, in addition to being an interesting concept, gives it another claim to fame: being perhaps the single ugliest piece of modern civic architecture known to man. And in a world where Brutalist architecture exists, this is no mean feat. What this does do positively, however, is provide a venue in which urban street art has a genuine, appropriate, sanctioned environment in which to exist. The wild vibrant gestural organic nature of street art contrasts with the highly composed, almost abstract structure of the ventilation and exhaust pipes and the security fencing around their access points.
Lone Exhaust, Pompidou CentreExhaust Stacks, Pompidou Centre
Street art has even been allowed to take over the stuccoed side of an existing 18th century building in what appears to be an homage to Salvador Dali.
Street Art, Pompidou Centre
Of course this doesn’t entirely stop unsanctioned street art or even just flat-out graffiti of a very pedestrian variety from cropping up around it. Graffiti aside, I thought this little house squeezed in between the gothic church and the later townhouse was fascinating – I could actually see setting up a small studio on the ground floor and living in the room above it.
I’ve been making a habit of photographing things we see every day but take for granted, like mailboxes and fire hydrants. I couldn’t pass up the bright yellow mailboxes of Paris, and especially not this one that has been so overtly decorated with graffiti. I think I got lucky that this one was on a dark blue background at least in part, to set it off and compliment it.
Yellow Postbox, Paris
I know, I know, the hydrant from Chalon already made an appearance, but it was soooo long ago I figured you all had forgotten it, and it also fits the theme of “things”, especially brightly-colored things that we see but take for granted. So here it is.
Hydrant, Chalon
I’ve also been photographing the bikeshare bikes in DC, so I had to take a crack at interpreting their French cousins. Unlike here in the US, the bikeshare bikes seem to be of a single universal design in France. In Paris and in Chalon they are the same design, with the same colors, the prime difference being in the logos on the rear wheel cover and the local advertising. Frankly I could have done an entire photo-essay on the bikeshare bikes but I had other things on my agenda.
Ve’Lib Bikeshare
Newsstands fall into that category as well, I think, of things we see but ignore. They’re very functional, and in places that have them, we tend to notice their presence/absence more than we do their form. This one is very Parisian, but with a modern twist – instead of having static broadsides plastered to the outside, now the ads are LED displays or at least rotating banners so in the span of a minute, you can see three to five different ads scrolling past.
Newsstand, Boulevard St. Michel, Paris
Last but not least, here is a public drinking fountain. I tend to notice them because here in DC for the most part if they exist at all they don’t work. In the 1870s, Baron Haussmann installed public drinking fountains across the city as part of a sanitation campaign, bringing fresh, clean drinking water to everyone. The design of the fountains was suitably ornate, bringing beautification along with safety.
This one is a bit soft because it was a long exposure, hand-held. I think it works, though, because it has a rather dreamy, painterly quality to it. You’re walking through a stone tunnel (in this case the carriageway) and emerging on the other end into a leafy green jungle. It conjures up imaginary adventure stories – where is this place? What awaits in the forest outside the cave? Who is the girl? Where is she going? No matter, I want to follow and find out!
Girl, Courtyard, Marais
Here is one of the seemingly omnipresent human statues that you find in major european cities. I love the dynamic going on in the picture. The woman posing with him is having her picture taken, but with the photographer outside the frame, the expressions of the passersby take on an entirely different meaning. And Saint Michel on his perch above the fountain looks like he too is about to pronounce judgment with his sword on the entire affair.
Human Statue, St. Michel Fountain
The Rue Galande is an alley that runs behind the block where Shakespeare & Co. bookstore is located. It is one of the old medieval streets that survived Haussmannization – the street itself bends and winds, and the building facades seem to mimic the street, teetering back and forth at unsteady angles.
Rue Galande, Paris
Shakespeare & Co. is a world-famous bookstore featuring english-language books and catering to the expat community. They have regularly scheduled readings, book signings, and social events in the store, and major literary luminaries stop by when passing through Paris. I love a good bookstore and if I lived in Paris I could see myself spending lots of time in here.
Meet Hans Zeeldieb, the street photographer working outside the Pompidou Centre. He was set up with his vintage 5×7, paper negatives, and portable darkbox doing portraits for 15 Euros a pop. He shot and developed them on the spot in 15 minutes. We struck up a friendly conversation when I saw his camera and he saw mine and talked a lot about photography. He sent me down the street a few blocks to the Centre Iris to go see an exhibit of wet plate collodion images by Jacques Cousin and several of his students, as well as some work by my friend Quinn Jacobson. Several years ago, I was involved in a gallery space in Hyattsville, Maryland called Art Reactor, where I curated a show of photographs made using the whole plate format*, and Quinn was one of the artists I selected. I think I made Hans a little nervous, as he overexposed the image of me. He did capture a good expression of me though, so I was happy to support a fellow working photographer.
In the first photo, I caught Hans with his hands in the darkbox, processing a print. The way it works, he exposes a paper negative in the camera, then develops it in the box. After the negative is developed, he sandwiches it with another piece of paper, opens a window in the dark box to expose it again, and processes the second paper, which now has a positive image. There are several advantages to this process – by working with paper, the development and fixing is much faster than with film, and you can use the same chemistry for both your negative and your finished print. I’ve seen or read about other itinerant photographers using much the same technique around the world, from Madrid to Kabul.
Hans with his camera, processing a photo
Here is a portrait of Hans outside the Pompidou Centre, just a close-up this time without the camera in the frame. He seems a little lost in thought – I think he was counting time for the print he was developing.
Hans, at the Pompidou Centre
* Whole Plate format is the original photographic format, defined today as 6 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. It is not entirely certain how this size was chosen by Daguerre as the plate size he wanted to use, but reasonable speculation ties it to book printer’s printing plates. It has varied in its specification over time, but it settled on the 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 size by the late 19th century.
I apologize for the randomness again. It kind of reflects my own state of mind at the moment anyway. But here’s a few more scenes from the Ile de la Cité.
The Sainte Chapelle is inside the compound of the Conciergerie (the prison where Marie Antoinette and Louis were held prior to their execution) and the modern day Palais de Justice. Here you can see the Sainte Chapelle from outside the gates of the Palais de Justice. The spire is a later 19th century re-creation of the original which was torn down during the French Revolution.
Sainte Chapelle Exterior
I don’t know the source of my fascination with safety bollards as photographic subjects. Maybe its because they’re such ordinary things with a very important purpose that we tend to ignore. I guess I empathize with the bollards.
Bollard, Palais De Justice
The gates to the Palais de Justice. When I was there, unfortunately, the Conciergerie museum was closed for renovations. This seemed to be an unfortunately frequent occurrence in Paris – a number of museums were closed for renovation work: the Conciergerie, the Musee Chatelet, and the Picasso, to name the most notable.
Gates, Palais De Justice
Here are the photos I mentioned a couple posts ago when talking about the Metro stop for Ile de la Cité. There’s a little open-air market they have set up right across from the exit where they sell pet supplies, flowers, and other various and sundry items. Here are two little dogs out for a walk in the pets section who were straining to take a look at one another.
Parisian Puppy Confrontation
And last but not least, I just loved the way the light was making the goldfish in the tanks glow.
The old part of the Metropolitain subway system in the city center of Paris is famous for the art nouveau railings and signs at the station entrances. I know I put a couple of photos in an earlier post about Transportation, but these three are specifically about the entrance railings and signs.
Art Nouveau Rail, Cité Metro
The railings LOOK to be bronze, from the patina, but I would suspect that they’re iron that has been painted. Bronze would make them extremely expensive, but then again, when you look at how lavish the French were in their public buildings in the late 19th century, it’s not inconceivable.
The entrance to the Ile De La Cité metro stop. This is where you get off the train to go see Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle. Immediately across from it is a little open-air market which has flowers and pet supplies. I have two pictures from the market of two little dogs staring each other down and goldfish in a tank from the market, going into another post.
Cité Metro Entrance
The most famous sight of all – the Metropolitain sign. There is a replica of one of these in the sculpture garden on the National Mall between the National Gallery of Art and the Natural History Museum here in Washington DC.
Here are four loose assorted images. I forgot I had the Eiffel Tower shot when I was posting the Eiffel Tower images because it was on a different roll. The Musee D’Orsay shots don’t have enough of a group to make a complete post of their own because technically you’re not supposed to take photos inside the museum in the first place, and it’s very crowded so it’s hard to take good photos of the building without lots of out-of-focus heads in the lower foreground. The Academie Francais building was a one-off, taken on my walk back to the apartment from the Musee D’Orsay. It was late enough in the day, and my feet were tired enough, that I couldn’t be bothered to try and see if the Academie was open and if they had any exhibits to visit. But it was lovely light and the building needed photographing.
All shots taken with my Rolleiflex 2.8E using Kodak Ektar 100. I include this little tidbit because people (read: photographers) want to know what gear was used, and what film. I don’t include aperture/shutter combinations as I A: don’t usually remember them, and B: that’s getting to geeky level of detail – most of the time if you want to re-create something you’ve seen of someone else’s, you don’t need that information unless there’s a special effect (very blurred motion or completely frozen, or extremely shallow depth-of-field). In any case as I’ve matured as a photographer, I care far more about the image itself and less about the mechanics of how it was made. You see photographers all the time geeking out about lenses and cameras, this film vs. that film vs. digital, CMOS vs CCD, but if DaVinci and Michelangelo ever had a debate about which paintbrush was better, it has not been recorded (or art historians aren’t publishing it!).
A photographer’s visit to Paris would not be complete without a trip to the Maison Europienne de la Photographie. The primary exhibit was Sebastiao Salgado’s current body of work documenting indigenous ways of life and remote places around the world. It would have been very hard to photograph the exhibit itself as it was VERY crowded, so I turned my lens toward the building. The entrance is a very modern looking (read 1960s style) wing, but the main block of the facility is housed in another one of those 18th century Parisian hotels that once belonged to some noble family.
Staircase, La Maison Europienne de La PhotographieWindow, Courtyard, La Maison Europienne de La Photographie
After visiting La Maison, my father and I ate here at Les Chimeres for lunch. It was a fairly chilly (for October) day, and you can see Parisian cafe culture at work – despite the chill, people were sitting outside of their own free will. This was true across the city, and in all weather (it took a brisk rain to drive people inside completely).
Les Chimeres Restaurant, Marais
Near the Pompidou Centre, I came upon this row of cafe tables set up and waiting for patrons. I know it’s a bit treacly and cliché as photos go, but it’s representative of the place and the atmosphere.
Cafe Tables, Pompidou Centre
Around the corner from La Maison and Les Chimeres was this scene. Number 43, Rue Francois Miron. I have no idea if anyone famous or noteworthy lived (or lives) there, but the weathered texture and the irregular symmetry and repeating patterns of the building cried out to be photographed.
43 Rue Francois Miron
I love looking up at buildings – it’s sometimes hard to do, and it forces you to break out of your street-level perspective. In places like New York, where the buildings are so tall, it can almost induce a sort of negative vertigo, but it still behooves us to stop and re-think how we see the world. Plus, you might miss something interesting if you don’t.
Upstairs, 43 Rue Francois Miron
Again, everything was shot with a Rolleiflex 2.8E, on Kodak Tri-X film.
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