Tag Archives: versailles

Paris in October – part 40 – Versailles Exteriors

December 24, 2013 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

This is the last post in the Paris in October series – with this, I’ve finished uploading new images from the series. I may go back and revisit a theme or two that span multiple posts, like staircases, but I’m pretty much done. It’s been a long, fun ride – two months worth of postings from a single nine-day trip. A lot of work, but well worth the effort. I hope you all have enjoyed the series as I’ve been posting them.

These are exterior views of Versailles, or at least view of/toward the exterior. I did not go out into the gardens – my feet were worn out at that point and they wanted an additional 9 euros to enter the gardens because they were going to be doing the musical fountain show, so I did not get around to the famous garden facade of the palace.

The entrance gates when you first approach are gilded iron. It’s one of the very first things you see, and it certainly makes an impression. Impressive as they are now, can you imagine what it would have been like in the 18th century to walk up to these gates?

The words on the building portico say, “A Toutes Les Glories De La France” – to all the glories of France. For a shining period, that was literally true of Versailles. It encapsulated the magnificence and power that was the French state in the era of Louis XIV. I don’t know when that phrase was placed on the building – it has much more of a Second Empire or Third Republic feel to it. It doesn’t seem like something one of the kings would have done – the palace itself screamed that sentiment in spades, putting it down in writing on the facade was superfluous and a bit gauche.

This is a view looking back at the town of Versailles from the palace entrance. The statue is the cousin of the one on the other side that I photographed in black-and-white with the grotesque figure providing a seat with its back for the allegorical female.

This is the palace’s front door. You can tell this is one of the older parts of the palace by the style – some brick instead of stone, less monumental in appearance. Less monumental, perhaps, but no less ostentatious. It had been raining that morning and so the marble tile courtyard surface was still wet.

Entrance Facade, Versailles, After the Rain

A view of one of the fountains immediately adjacent to the house:

A view of the garden facade through a window of another wing of the building. The colors of the sky were beautiful with all the rainclouds breaking up. You can see down the long walk with the ponds in the middle, how far off the estate stretches.

Black and White, Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 39 – Staircases at Versailles

December 23, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

These first two are of the service stairs that lead from today’s restaurant and snack bar to the ground floor and the exit to the gardens. By the time I got to the dining room, my feet were screaming at me from all the continuous marching through the palace and across the cobbled courtyards. I did not eat in the main dining room but instead got a sandwich from the cafe. There was no place to sit (the only available tables were the stand-up kind, every chair was taken). Leaving the cafe to be faced with this staircase, then, was suddenly a daunting task. What to do, then, but photograph it?

To proof the images I wanted to scan and print bigger, I had a set of 5×5 inch proof prints made at the time of developing the film. Sometimes, the minilab prints looked better than my final scan results, but more often, they look worse. Based on the minilab prints, I excluded these two from my rough edit. Going back over the film while scanning everything else, I looked at the negatives and they looked good, so I took a whirl and scanned the first one. As it turned out, they were much better than I thought they would be based on the proof prints.

These next two are a memory refresher from an earlier post. With the exception of the last photo in this post, the only staircases I photographed at Versailles, it seems, were service stairs. I guess everyone is content to ignore them and only pay attention to (and mob) the Queen’s Stairs. Their loss, my gain.

When I originally posted this staircase, I mistakenly labeled it “The Queen’s Staircase”. It is not. The Queen’s staircase is far more opulent and magnificent than this, although I wouldn’t complain about having this be the main stairs in my house…

Cameras, Color, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 38 – Versailles Interiors in color

December 22, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I’m sure you’ve read my rant about how crowded Versailles was. It seriously cramped my style trying to photograph any of the spaces on the main circuit of the house, even with my cellphone. That said, the whining ends here. I’m happy with the pictures I did take; I just wish I could have taken more. When I go back, and I WILL go back, sometime, I’ll do things differently – I’ll do the gardens first, then the house, and I’ll go in the dead of winter, on a weekday. Preferably during a snowstorm.

There are multiple halls filled with statues of great Frenchmen. Here are two such passageways, one with and one without tourists. The shot with tourists provides a human scale and a modern reference point for the house. The one without gives an architectural scale.

The royal chapel is one space in the palace that truly gives you a sense of not only the grandeur of the palace but also the extreme disparity of wealth between the aristocracy and the peasants.

A huge part of the purpose of Versailles was to show off the wealth and power of the state. To that purpose, it lived up to it in spades. This mantlepiece is about level with my shoulders, and the head in the center is about the size of my head. You could actually walk into this fireplace.

Here is Louis XIV as Mars, the God of War.

This is the one view of the Hall of Mirrors I was able to take. It’s an atypical view of the room, and as a result I’m particularly proud of it because it is representative without being cliche. Most people when viewing the room are paying attention to the mirrors and never look up, but half the brilliance of the room comes from the crystal chandeliers reflecting and amplifying the light.

Black and White, Cameras, Medium Format Cameras, Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 8 – Versailles in black and white

November 10, 2013 dcphotoartist 1 Comment

Here are my takes on the palace of Versailles, in black-and-white. There are actually quieter spaces within the building where you can take photos without a gazillion tourists blocking your view and making appreciation of the space impossible, unlike the state apartments. I’m dividing this post into two sections – architecture and sculpture.

ARCHITECTURE

Here’s a side staircase. Not the grand stairs that led to the queen’s apartments, but nonetheless, a magnificent entry.

This hall is behind and beneath the state apartments, looking out to the gardens to the west.

This doorway is the central door leading out from the hall above to the gardens.

These three are from one of the side buildings outside the palace proper, where the gift shop and ticket office are located today. Anywhere else they would be special, but at Versailles, they are relegated to the service space.

SCULPTURE

Sculpture is everywhere at Versailles, from the entrance gates to the halls in the basement.

This grotesque is on the back side of one of the heroic female “virtues” at the entrance gates to the palace. Seeing this, it’s not hard to see how the peasant classes who were starving would see it as emblematic of how the nobles viewed them and took umbrage accordingly.

This Satyr is in one of the halls of the ground floor of the palace, relegated to a corner where few tourists venture. I suspect his fig-leaf is a Victorian-era excess, as it appears to be glued on much after the fact.

I’m not sure who/what this statue represents, but it appears to be some kind of hermit/mystic, judging from his attire and the smoking pot at his feet.

Here is a water fountain outside the palace in the main forecourt.

These last two were found in the town of Versailles in the outdoor courtyard of an architectural antiques dealer. A different take and a contrast to the exquisite statuary in the palace, they nonetheless have their own beauty and dignity.

Travel

Paris in October – part 5 – more Versailles

November 6, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

Here are more images from Versailles, these from the town, not just the palace.

These were from a pair of antique shops in the town. The first one specialized in architectural antiques, the other in books and clocks. There was a pair of antique enlargers in the bookstore, along with some really neat clocks. The tall clock was actually complete, and the price was very reasonable (around 200 euros), but of course shipping it home would have cost more than the clock was worth when restored!

Photography, Travel

Paris in October – part 4 – Versailles

November 5, 2013 dcphotoartist Leave a comment

I’m very ambivalent about Versailles. I’m glad I went to see it but given what I know now, there are better times to go, like the dead of winter on a weekday, not a Sunday in tourist season. There were so many people it was all you could do to peek at the various rooms, let alone actually read the signage or look at anything in depth.

Tourists as a class are becoming more and more obnoxious especially with the advent of camera-enabled mobile devices. Phones are bad enough, but really, could you think for a moment about the effect on everyone else trying to see something when you hold your iPad over your head to take a picture?? Or even when you increase your cubic volume by splaying your elbows out to steady it while composing??? It’s beyond narcissistic.

Anyway… To find a bright spot in that cloud, the difficulty in photographing whole rooms made me pay attention to details in the main spaces, like window levers and curtain hooks.

Here are a couple of shots of the hall of mirrors. It was so crowded that it was hard to photograph, aggravated by the aforementioned phones and tablets being hoisted aloft to see over the crowd. So I photographed the chandeliers instead.