Just back from Oslo and then Spain, we’re off to Paris for the Salon de la Photo. These photos are the ones I took with my phone. I also took some with the Flexaret TLR, but they’ll take a few days to process.
At the weekend, the Salon de la Photo in Paris is on. It’s a gear-orientated show and I’m not super interested in gear, but I got free tickets and it’s always fun to see what people are interested in.
As our days are fairly heavily booked this weekend, we go straight from the train to the first exhibition: Minimal. I take photos on the way. Today I’m the weirdo that takes photos in the subway.
I left Paris before these fancy automated trains appeared. They’re exotic to me.
Minimal. Modern art, so not really my thing. But my wife was enthusiastic.
I don’t normally take photos of pieces of art because the artist did all the work and I don’t add anything to it. But just for context, I took a few to show you.
One of the temporary exhibitions is about textures and earth. Some of the pieces are interesting.
Another exhibition was about light.
Another was allowing people to rearrange cube frames any way they wanted.
But overall, I’m more interested in the people visiting and in the building itself.
One person was going round the exhibition with a suitcase. Essentially as we did, except we had rucksacks.
Going up the stairs, I was interested in the juxtaposition of old and new: old tiled floor, new concrete staircase with glass sides.
Once again, old and new with the old arched window and wooden floor, opening on a concrete wall. Also the tones were very nice.
This piece was half building, half light display. Probably my favourite. It made the composition really interesting.
And off we go again down the subway to the Salon de la Photo.
The exhibition was at La Villette. These used to be Paris’s slaughterhouses. Amusingly, the previous exhibition was above Les Halles, which used to be the Paris meat market. There is a theme here.
I remember when La Villette was converted and opened as an exhibition centre in 1982-1983. It also has a scientific library I went a few times when I was a kid (no internet yet).
The place is absolutely heaving. There is obviously a lot of interest in new gear.
When I posted I was thinking of going there, Jill mentioned that she would be at the Ricoh stand (she’s Ricoh ambassador). We met there and she took this photo of us.
We don’t stay very long, I can’t get interested in tons of hardware. I consider for a while getting some back issues of Polka Magazine, but the stand was busy so I give up on the idea.
Off we go again. We take a few photos around the venue…
And down the subway again to go see my parents.
That’s the end of day one. That was exhausting.
See you another day.
#Photography #Paris #Travel #BlackAndWhite #BlackAndWhitePhotography