Category Archives: Photographs: France

Photographs: France, Photographs: Urban/Street

It’s Time To Dance!

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It's Time To Dance
Graffiti, street art, and a potted ivy plant, Le Marais

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: France, Photographs: Urban/Street

Exposition Le Bikini

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Exposition Le Bikini
Surprising juxtaposition of signs posted on a wall in Le Marais, Paris

Exposition Le Bikini. Paris, France. August 10, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Surprising juxtaposition of signs posted on a wall in Le Marais, Paris

Street posters on urban walls can be interesting in a variety of ways. Often the colors are wildly juxtaposed, ranging from retro monochromatic looks to posters that go for very bright colors of paper, illustration, and text in an attempt to stand out from the other posters. They are not designed to last, and they often weather in interesting ways, with rips and runs and flaps and gouges. Interesting juxtapositions develop as the old layers are covered by the new and, over time, the new may fall off and reveal even older material.

These “Exposition Le Bikini” posters, in various sizes, were all over this part of Paris — we were walking through Le Marais. They may show up in some of my other street photographs from this visit, though not as central elements as in this one. I found the juxtaposition of “bikini” posters with posters for what I presume is a performance of very old Russian sacred music to be mildly jarring!

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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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Architecture, Photographs: France, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Rooftops Of Paris, Twilight

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Rooftops Of Paris, Twilight
Rooftops of Paris and the Eiffel Tower at Twilight, Montmartre

Rooftops Of Paris, Twilight. Paris, France. August 10, 2016. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Rooftops of Paris and the Eiffel Tower at Twilight, Montmartre

This photograph is partly a hotel story. There are all sorts of such stories, but this one began poorly and ended well. We took a cab from the train station to our hotel when we arrived in Paris, hopped out, ran inside, went to the desk to check in… and they had no idea who we were. Uh, we were in the wrong hotel. Ours was next-door and, if I recall, had a similar name. We sorted this out, went to the right hotel, checked in, and went up to our room. We opened the door to find… someone else’s luggage spread out in the room. Uh, no…

Back downstairs at the desk they apologized profusely and asked if we should mind an upgrade to a better room with a better view on a higher floor. Sounded good to us, and we ended up high enough to have a decent overview of the surroundings. We didn’t initially think of this in a photographic context, at least not until we found ourselves in the room at twilight one evening as lights began to come on in the city and soon the Eiffel Tower was illuminated.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: France, Photographs: Night, Photographs: Urban/Street

Boulangerie Coquelicot

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Boulangerie Coquelicot
Two people walk past the closed storefront of Boulanger Coquelicot at night, Paris

Boulangerie Coquelicot. Paris. France. August 11, 2016. © Copyright 2016 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Two people walk past the closed storefront of Boulanger Coquelicot at night, Paris

This will be a brief post today… I made this photograph last August on an evening in Montemartre when we went out to look for a place to grab dinner. We passed this bakery, a place that our son and daughter-in-law had told us they had visited when they were here a few months earlier, and I figured I should photograph it. The location was quite dark and I was shooting handheld, so the long exposure allowed the furtive, hurrying figures to blur a bit.

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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.