Sunday April 10 was a beautiful sunny day with a high of 16. Finally, it's April in Paris! It is also voting day in France and we passed a number of buildings where there were moderate line-ups of folks waiting to vote. Schools are used as voting stations and voting is on Sundays.
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| View from our apartment on a sunny morning! |
We headed out late morning to go to the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, one of our favourite photography museums. It is located in the Marais on the Right Bank.
We first passed the outdoor market on Rue Monge-- just about a 10 minute walk from our apartment towards the Seine.
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| The market is half food and half flea |
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| The cheeses looked good |
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| Vegetables |
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| Alain crossing the Seine |
On one of the bridges, the café with the red awning (below) had a number of tables and chairs right on the bridge. Looks like a program for expanded café service set up during Covid.
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| Lunch on the bridge |
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| Crossing the Seine |
Our destination was the Maison Européene de la Photographie (MEP) to see the exhibit entitled: Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy. The exhibit took a new angle on the history of photography through the prism of intimate relationships between lovers. The exhibit brought together 14 series by some of the most important photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries, comprising of some masterpieces from the MEP collection and loaned works by a number of contemporary artists.
The series of photographs trace many different stories and scenarios from the first days of an affair, marriages, honeymoons, pain of separation and even the last days shared between lovers. I am only including a limited number of photographs. There was a lot of reflection in the galleries, so it was difficult to take photos. There were also a lot of intimate shots.
One of my favourites was a series of photos by René Groebli taken of his honeymoon with his wife Rita Dürmüller in 1952. They had met at the Zurich School of Applied Art and married in October 1951, but didn't go on their honeymoon until the following year. They went to Paris and stayed in a humble hotel in Montparnesse. He took many photographs and a few years later they created a book of the photographs which was published in 1954 (L'Oeil de l'amour- The Eye of Love).
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| René Groebli (b. Zurich 1927) |
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| All photos taken from their honeymoon |
JH Engström (Karstad, Sweden 1969) & Margot Willard (Montreuil, France 1978) put together their love story in a book entitled Foreign Affair, which was photographed and edited between December 2010 and February 2011. They travelled between Sweden and Paris after they met. In 2014, their son was born in Paris. They then went to live in Sweden and then moved back to Montreuil, outside Paris.
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| JH with Paris background |
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| The lovers- a bit blurred |
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| Margot with the background in Sweden |
There was a very poignant love story by photographer Nubuyoshi Araki (Tokyo, b.1941). In 1971, Araki published his first book,
Sentimental Journey, a visual diary of his honeymoon with young wife Yöko. It was self-published under both names in a limited edition of 1,000 copies and was one of the first photographic works to expose such intimate moments. The cover photograph depicts their wedding. His second photo-essay entitled
Winter Journey captures his final months with Yöko, from May 1989 until her death in January 1990 at the age of 42. The last part of the series documents the funeral and there are also images of Chiro, their beloved cat, gradually assuming an increasing presence.
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| Wedding photo |
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| From the 1971 Sentimental Journey |
In the hospital-from Winter Journey
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| The cat and other photos from Winter Journey |
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| The funeral- Winter Journey |
Another very moving love story was documented in the photos of Hervé Guibert (Saint-Cloud (France), 1955-Clamart (France)1991). Gilbert met Thierry in1997 when he was 20 years old; Thierry was 21. One was born on December 14 and the other on December 15th. Thierry entered Hervés work and became the protagonist of many of his texts. They traveled extensively. Guibert published Voyage aves deus enfants in 1982 and La Mausolée des amants (Mausoleum of Lovers) was published posthumously in 2001. Guibert died on December 27, 1991 and Thierry on July 14, 1992, both from AIDS.
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| Thierry à Palerme 1979 |
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| T. au verre de vin, tête penchée, Santa Caterina, c. 1983 |
One of the rooms also featured Nan Goldin's (b. 1953) famous series
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 1973-1986, which reflected the daily life of a community whose members expose their most intimate moments of love, partying, sex, drugs, and violence. Goldin's work is part contemporary art and part documentary photography and lies between the border of work of art and private diary.
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| Nan and Brian in bed, New York City, 1983 |
After the exhibit we walked a few blocks further into the Marais. While most stores are closed on Sundays in Paris, the Marais is largely open and many of the streets are blocked off for pedestrians. A good place for a Sunday flâneur.
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| Merry-Go-Round on Rue Rivoli |
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| "Just believe in art" sign on a building |
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| A wonderful alley of greenery off Rue Vieille du Temple |
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| We gabbed a delicious spinach and goat cheese borak from Sacha's |
We finally found out more about the Teddies that are all over Paris. They originated with a man named Philippe who has a bookshop in the
les Gobelins area (the 13th), not too far from where we are staying in the 5th. In 2018 (pre COVID), he put one in the window of his bookshop and began handing them out to other shop owners. The
nounours des Gobelins (
Teddies of Les Gobelins) extended their paws throughout the city and to other cities, including New York. Philippe, who in interviews only calls himself Philippe,
le papa des nounours (
Philippe, Father of the Teddies), had a
Doudou (French for the item you had as a kid that didn't leave your side). His childhood
Doudou was a gorilla who then had a bigger gorilla as its
Doudou, who then got a Teddy.
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| The Teddies in the Marais |
We stopped later in the afternoon for a coffee at Ob La Di on Rue Sointage. They had a small patio area where we caught some rays.
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| Making our coffees |
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| Lots of sun and shadow outside Ob La Di |
We passed a few voting stations in schools.
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| Getting out the vote |
We walked to Pont Neuf to visit the renovated Samaritaine department store. It was founded by Ernest and Marie-Louie Cognacq-Jaÿ in 1870 as a small boutique on Rue de Pont-Neuf. It was named after a statute of "La Samaritaine", the Samaritan woman in St. John's Gospel, found on a pump house near the bridge which was dismantled in 1813.
From 1890-1910, Cognacq acquired property in the area and commissioned architect Franz Jourdain to design and construct a building with a riveted steel frame supporting a huge glass roof decorated in the Art Nouveau style.
From 1926-28, architect Henri Sauvage supervised the construction of the tiered Art Deco building on the banks of the Seine. Cognacq died in 1928 before the new project was completed. In 2001, LVMH acquired a 55% interest in Samaritaine (later 100% in 2010). In 2005, the store closed for safety reasons. From 2015-2020 constructions was carried out on all five project packages including a new building on Rue de Rivoli.
Samaritaine reopened in 2021with the renovated Art Nouveau building along with a new contemporary structure on Rue Rivoli. It now offers more than 20,000 square metres and has a number of places to eat and drink on the premises. There is also a Hotel. We only explored part of the complex.
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| Outside the corner of the renovated main building |
The main renovated building
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| The new Hotel on the left and the main building on the right |
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| The interiors were amazing |
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| Beautiful displays |
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| The glass ceiling |
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| The wrought iron work was very intricate and there were beautiful murals with peacocks |
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| More detail as when got to the top of the building |
Looking down from the top floor
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| Part of another building in the complex |
We walked by the nearby bouquinistes (booksellers)- lots of old Vogue covers near Samaritaine.
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| Lots of Vogue covers for sale |
We walked back to the apartment where Alain made dinner and we relaxed. Another 20,000 step day. It was so nice to have blue sky all day and lots of sun. Perfect Paris weather and a great day!
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