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The Jeu de Paume has a fabulous exhibition entitled "Uprisings" running through January 15, 2017. The exhibit takes over the bulk of the exhibition space, covering two floors. It explores political uprisings, with lots of photography, video, and graphic art to make its points.
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Bad weather usually enhances a photograph of an iconic structure. This photograph was shot from the Printemps Department Store's 9th floor rooftop on a foggy, but somewhat balmy Sunday the week before Christmas.
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Paris street musicians always have something interesting to say. This trio was playing straight-ahead gypsy jazz (Irving Berlin's Dancing Cheek to Cheek in the movie Top Hat) as shoppers in the Marais walked and sometimes scooted by. Lovely.
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Picasso's cubism can be viewed as a reaction to the Impressionists. While they focused on brush strokes, he focused on volume. This photograph was made from the third floor of the Picasso Museum in Paris. The thick and wavy glass, together with all of its imperfections, account for the abstraction. Some of the photographs that I made while visiting the museum are reflections in plexiglass-glass display cases of the views from the windows. The building was just as interesting as the collections and exhibits that it houses.
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The afternoon sun can create such pleasure and simultaneously such danger. Some of my favorite movies are from Jean-Pierre Melville and Jules Daassin--Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle, Le Flambur, and Riffi.
In actuality, this photograph was made in Frank's Gehry's building for the Fondation Louis Vuitton.
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Friday night one week before Christmas, we walked from the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, down the Av. des Champs-Élysées, through the Christmas Market (before the Berlin truck incident), through the Louvre, down and the Rue de Rivoli, and through the Marais, until we stopped at Benedict for dinner seated at the bar. It seemed like the entire city was out walking, shopping, and eating. Nothing says Paris quite like the Eiffel Tower and the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.
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One of the reasons we decided to visit Paris this December was because the Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting an exhibition of a 130 works from the Sergei Shchukin collection that is part of the Hermitage Museum's permanent collection.
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it came as no surprise when I stumbled on an empty cafe displaying the album cover for Dexter Gordon's A Swinging' Affair. The album was recorded in 1962 by the late Rudy Van Gelder, but it was released in 1964 when Gordon had taken up residence in Paris as an expat.
