The last time we were in Paris, we tried to visit the Picasso museum, but it was fully booked long in advance. So this time, I booked early so we could have a look.
Once again, I was more interested in the building itself than in the exhibition inside. I kind of like early Picasso (e.g. during his collaboration with Braque), but I’m not so keen on his later stuff.
The building is an old hotel particulier with grand entrance, grand staircase, and interesting features. An you’d expect it.
One of the most fascinating thing when we visited was the light effects on blinds, walls, and windows. This one made me think of film.
The old glass (18th century maybe?) was creating patterns on the blinds that were really interesting.
I wasn’t the only one interested in the light effects.
From the windows, you could see such typical views of Paris it was nearly cartoonish.
I absolutely loved this window. I took many photos of it from different angles. And the view of a typical Parisian building on the other side was essentially creating a postcard.
I was attracted to the double diagonal composition of this photo.
Even the service stairs were interesting, with the wooden steps and the lighting that was creating nice tones.
For some reason I really loved this view. I put the fire dry columns on the right so that they’re not too centred, and the handrails point at them.
My wife took a number of photos this weekend from that position.
Back outside, we walk around a little before lunch. I took a Vivian Maier photo with my reflection in the mirror. This one is the one I took with my phone, I took the same one with the TLR. Apparently people were taking photos of me taking photos with the TLR. Also a lot of people asked me about it. That’s how you know you’re doing something weird.
The day was really good for light and shadow photos.
During lunch I reloaded the camera (photo courtesy of my wife).
An art group in Paris has covered the walls of pixelated pictures. A lot of them are Invader-style figures, but others are famous people.
Of course I couldn’t resist taking photos of people crossing the street.
And of people’s legs sticking out.
This is what I look like taking photos apparently.
Eventually we made our way home to my parents. We walked a good part of the way on my usual haunts. That’s the Paris I grew up with.
When I saw that bicycle, I knew I wanted to take a photo of it, but also I wanted a photo of someone riding another bicycle in the frame. That wasn’t easy to get, but I managed one.
Market day near Maubert-Mut.
I saw that guy sitting on the bicycle rack and knew I wanted a photo of him.
We had to cut our walk short because we bought a lot of books at a secondhand book store and couldn’t really walk with 30kg of books. These are the photo books I got. My wife got a bunch of architecture books.
Last photo of the day: in my parents’ backyard, a white plastic chair was upside down. I can’t resist this sort of scene. The sadness of the abandoned chair, the squares of light, the shadows.
That’s it for today. See you another day.
#Photography #BlackAndWhite #BlackAndWhitePhotography #Travel #Paris