It’s Time To Dance! Le Marais, Paris, France. August 10, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Graffiti, street art, and a potted ivy plant, Le Marais

We wandered into Le Marais, a section of Paris that still retains the old, narrow, and sometimes twisting streets from before the improvements that brought wide boulevards and a logical (or so they tell me) street layout. It is also a sort of “artsy” area, with lots of little shops, the occasional museum, interesting people, and lots of street art. All in all, it felt like a street photographer’s paradise to me. (I made my favorite photograph of the entire five-week trip — and perhaps one of my favorites of all time — here in Le Marais, probably only feet from where I made this one.)

The street art, which includes but is certainly not limited to graffiti, is ubiquitous. Some seems light-hearted, some has a darker edge. Some is political, and the meaning of some of it was opaque to me. The combination of the French language — which I don’t speak and only some of which I can figure out — and English, some of which seems just a bit odd or “off,” gave a lot of it a kind of perplexing quality. For example, the words written around the edge of the black planter down near the sidewalk, which enthusiastically announce “It’s Time to Dance!” I saw these large female dancing figures elsewhere, another visual theme whose precise significance eluded me.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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