elle s'est échappé

Cemetière Père Lachaise

2008-06-19T05:03:00.001-07:00

Musée D'Orsay

2008-06-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

On May 28th, we had lunch on the Seine and visited Musée D'Orsay. Luckily most of me was covered, but I still got incredibly sunburnt in one small patch.

Jardin du Luxembourg

2008-06-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Luxembourg is the largest public park in Paris, and is a parterre or 'formal' garden, meaning that it has very particularly trimmed trees and hedges, and a formal design. The palace itself was built during the reign of Louis XIII for his mother, Marie de Médicis. It has a combination of gravel and grass, with lots of chairs for people to sit around and sunbathe oread or do whatever.
In Paris, there isn't much "personal space", because everything is so small and efficient, and so the public space is very important. Instead of spending leisure time in their own nonexistent backyard, Parisians frequent parks and public areas such as the Luxembourg.

There were plenty of things to occupy children - tennis courts, carousels, pony rides, puppet shows, etc. - while their parents lounged in the sun.

Some teenagers playing.. ball.. (I guess?) outside of the garden's gates.

What up, Grandpa Joe?

GIANT HEAD STATUE!

...it was really huge. It accounted for a large portion of the actual shaded area.

Carousels are key to any good public space.

...as are old men reading newspapers.

There are these really great pools of standing water where one can push miniature sailboats around with long poles. It sounds lame, but it probably would have entertained me, too, as a kid.

petit obélisk

Le Figaro: 30 ANS D'ÉMOTION. Displayed outside of the Luxembourg walls as an invitation to passers-by to regard the world through 30 years of the 'Le Figaro' lens, many of them cover images.
In Paris (and France in general, I believe), there are lots of public art exhibitions. Lots of galleries put photos up outside on material that can survive the weather. Some people just wheat paste them onto walls. More on that later.

Notre Dame de Paris

2008-06-08T18:20:00.001-07:00

"Notre Dame" translates as "Our Lady" and refers to the Virgin Mary.

There isn't too much to say about the place - it's a giant church.

The main entrance, on the west-facing side.

The building of the cathédrale, commissioned by Bishop Maurice de Sully, began in 1163AD, during the reign of Louis VII.

The French Gothic architecture outside and the paintings, stained glass windows, sculptures all reference the naturalist movement in art, which is seemingly more secular and divergent from other traditional religious Romanesque structures (like the Cathedrale of Saint-Front in Périgeux, built around 1150 AD).
There was also this strange ambient music inside that seemed to come from somewhere other than the church itself. There were more tourists than anywhere else I'd been so far - it was a merging point for a lot of different cultures.

As I mentioned in the last post, our first assignment was on the "Public Paris". At Notre Dame, I photographed mainly people, but I tried to take a few of the other surroundings as well.

These are some of my favorite portraits;

I wish I had used a smaller aperture and included the structure itself in this photo, as well as focused closer on the man's eye and hunch back, because he was obviously pulling the whole Quasimodo look, and trying to get sympathy from those coming out of the cathédrale.

This guy was doing the same as the other guy - begging for a bit of sympathy as people were exiting. He saw me taking photos of tourists and him and other beggars, and must have thought I was something other than a tourist, because he winked at me as if we were sharing a secret and said "Ca va?" I stared back at him for a minute, shrugged, and said, "Eh, ca va bien." and went back about my business.

Crazy French goth kids singing Metallica -("Enter Sandman", specifically.)

Some accordian players on a bridge on the Seine, as seen on the walk back to the Metro station.

Les apogées de mes Voyages.

2008-05-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I've had the time to post anything. I can't believe an entire three weeks has almost passed. It's bittersweet, you know - I miss everyone at home and six weeks seemed like an eternity when I first arrived. Now it seems so short-lived, and I still have so much to accomplish!

We had our first Critique on Monday. Jeff is a very tough critic. On Monday I also presented Moreau's Galatea for my Art History class, so I spent the entire weekend glued to my computer screen and wasn't really able to go out until last night. There is a cool restaurant/café near our apart-hotel called Les Artistes. It's fun to hang out there and converse with people in French - it helps me a lot to speak with people more intimately than I would with "serveurs" (waiters) or employees of grocery stores and boutiques and whatnot. When I am able to have actualy conversations with local residents of the neighborhood, they help me to pronounce things correctly and correct my grammar so that I learn from mistakes. Anyone else will generally just wrinkle their nose or ask me to repeat myself, or start speaking to me in English. But my grasp of the language is improving so much - I often think about how I would say a particular phrase in French just while thinking about it or speaking it in English.
Oh, and on Monday I was also turned down by Agnès Varda for an interview because she is working on a documentary right now. She took the few minutes I needed to get a quote from her to personally reprimand me (in English) for even asking her secretary if I could speak with her. It wasn't a great day for me, and I had just spent the entire weekend stressing about the crit. Mais, c'est la vie, n'est-ce pas?

I figure I will have to post some photos chronologically in order to do some catching up. I won't get it all in, but I will post again soon after this to finish up the most recent information.

On FRIDAY, 23 Mai

we had a picque-nicque at Pont des Arts, the bridge over the Seine that is in front of Paris' lovely art school. Lots of young people drinking wine, eating cheese, and singing and playing guitar in large groups. Sounds stereotypical, but it was one of the most exciting places we've been as a little group of American students.

Before heading to the bridge, we all split off and picked up baguettes, cheese, bottles of wine, nutella, fruit, and anything we wanted to eat.

On the way there, somewhere in the 6th or 1st arrondissements, I started to notice a ton of tourists and some scattered beggars. Thus began the lead-in to what became a small semi-conceptual study of people in each place I went, which is what I presented for my first assigment on "Public Paris".

On the bridge:

Cassie, Colleen, Nicole.

Sippin' on some Schweppes.

The spread.

Maggie.

Cassie, Katy.

A bunch of French art students.

SUNDAY, 25 Mai.

The Market at Bastille.

Hanging out in Le Marais (3e & 4e Arr.) - the Latin quarter of Paris, and it is as well consiered the gay sector of Paris.

A bird scavenging my gyro.

Lots of sweet street art.

We hung out in this alley forever - there was a lot of graffiti, and a boutqiue of three combined artists - a hat-maker, a jeweler, and a man who makes clothes and bags of out old mail sacs. You can see the strange hats at www.mino-delavictoire.com

A mannequin wearing a jacket made of letter sacs.

On the way home:

Some sweet old musicians playing for change in the metro station.

Since my last post, we have also been to Notre Dame, Musée D'Orsay, Jardin du Luxembourg, a few famous cemetaries, Les catacombes, and lots of other things that are probably slipping my mind right now.

Some other images from last week that I took in a shopping district:

I will post the rest of my photos as soon as I can! It is difficult because I work with NEF files for my classes but I post JPGS on here, so that is twice the work if any of them need editing or fussing with.

Hope all is well in Indiana with the storms and everything. Be careful, mes amours!

Love,

SARA

Mes Classes, et le Louvre.

2008-05-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

The past two days have been completely hectic. Yesterday (Tuesday 20 May), we had orientation at the IES building and a pizza party in the garden courtyard there. I wasn't that impressed with the pizza.. which surprises me, because I assumed pizza would be amazing almost anywhere in western Europe because of the position to Italy. I guess Bloomington, Klint and Avers' Pizza have turned me into a pizza snob, if there is such an oximoronic sort of thing.

We spent much of Tuesday meeting the people at IES and talking about course objectives, as well as touring the area around the IES center and the Citadines, and becoming more familiar with getting around.

Our class in the Salle Agnès Varda (the nouvelle vague director of Vagabond and Cléo de 5 à 7, among other amazing films - more things should be named after her).

A pigeon outside of the IES center. Fulfilling an assignment from K. Tacklebox Eash.

On Tuesday we also took a Bateaux Parisiene along the Seine river, and saw lots of things from a boat's eye view - like the Palais Bourbon, Musée D'Orsay, Musée du Louvre, Pont Neuf, Notre Dame, etc.

dans le bateau

Musée D'Orsay

Le Tour Eiffel was a lot smaller than I imagined it, as are a lot of things about the city of Paris, but I somehow still couldn't fit it into the frame of a photo?

After the tour on the Seine, we walked around the area near Rue de Rivoli (also near the Champs Elysées).

I believe this is Av. de L'Opéra, near where we got crèpes.

Prof. Jeff Wollin was convinced that this was the site of the world-famous crèpes made by a man with no teeth. They were pretty damn good, but this dude had plenty of teeth and we found out later that he was an imposter who rented the toothless crèpe guy's old location.

Mine had nutella, bananas and coconut. It was the raddest sugar trip I've ever been on.

Cassie "double fisting" some crèpes. Dang!

---------------

Today (Wednesday 21 May) we had our first supplementary French class... Maggie and I are the only relatively fluent students on this trip, so the class was a bit 'ennuyeux' in that respect, but it was a nice brush-up. My French skills are not what I thought they were as far as fluency goes, but I am getting better every day. I have noticed that everything I say in English I think about how I would say it in French, even down to the pronunciation. I hope to come back completely fluent, but I have some grammar skills to work on in the meantime.

We also had our first Art History class and Photography class. Both were mainly instructional, but after we were done with classes for the day we met up with our Art History Professor, Lee Allen, at the Musée du Louvre.

Guy sleeping by his bike in the central courtyard of the Louvre. I wish you could see this in RAW format.

Dans le Louvre.

Winged Nike of Samothrace. A Greek statue recovered by a French archaologist. Nike (the goddess of victory) is thought to be donated by a Mecedonian general after the naval victory at Cyprus in 306 BC.

The Mona Lisa is tiny in comparison to most of the paintings around it. It was pretty, but kind of disappointing, and one of the only things I saw encased in glass.

Delacroix - Liberty Leading the People

Antoine-Jean Gros - Napoleon at the Pest-House at Jaffa.
This was one of my favorite paintings that I read about in Boeckl's Images of Plague and Pestilence. Commissioned by Napoleon, this painting was used as propaganda to dissuade the public that there was any truth to the "rumours" of Napoleon's mercy killings of his own plagued soldiers. Gros cleverly portrays Napoleon touching a buboe, not unlike plague saints like Charles de Borromeo. His stance is also referencial of Apollo de Belvedere, a Roman god.

The Greek Statue room.

Lovely Louvre fountains.

The famous pyramid at the Louvre. You may have read about it in such fact-meets-fiction books as The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons.

I would have liked to stay longer, but the Metro workers are striking tomorrow, and the usually goes into effect at 8 p.m. the night prior, so we couldn't risk getting stuck across town.
In France, (according to Jeanne, a french woman who works at IES) unions don't use striking as a last resort. They strike first, then talk about, strike again, talk some more, and usually never solve anything.

Je suis arrivé!

2008-05-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

Une femme dans la gare.
Check out the sweet graffiti etching on the window.

Paris is beautiful. I arrived at Charles De Gaulle with Austin, another student on my flight, around 8:30a.m. or 2:30a.m. Indiana time. I am jet-lagged to near delusion. On the plane, I read a book called Culture Shock in France by Sally Adamson Taylor. I learned not to smile for no reason, eat salad with my right hand or speak to groups of vagrant children. It was an interesting read..

Upon arrival, we exchanged our money for a 60% rate (yikes!) and then took the RER (suburban train system) to a nearby Metro stop. From there we walked to the Citadines, our hotel-aparment complex. Quaint old houses, strange architecture and miles of graffitied concrete were my first impressions of Paris.

Lugging my huge suitcase up stairs in the Metro station and down narrow city sidewalks for 12 or so blocks was torture, but I made it! Even though I thought I packed light for a six week trip, I would pack way lighter next time.

In Montparnasse, Maggie and I share a small room with a trundle bed and desk, and seperate rooms for the kitchenette, toilet and bath. We have free internet, cable, continental breakfast, and this amazing 24-hour espresso machine. French coffee is stronger than any coffee I have ever tasted.

________________Our room.

We spent the day touring the area and the IES Center where we will take photography and art history classes and received free Metro passes through the school. The center is within walking distance, and is also on a bus route with a stop directly across the street.
I ate earlier with all the ladies at a local place called "Les Artistes". The food was decently priced and very gourmet.

This is my roommate, Maggie, trying (and failing) to get her computer to read her microphone so she could use Skype. We are both without it, and so are forced to use the cellphones that IES require we have for local calls. Now we will have to get international cards and make calls with those.

More tomorrow when I'm not so dead tired.

Extended Links!

2008-05-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

David Lynch performs at Divan Du Monde on May 5.
..Note that his speech opens with an orchestral performance of Twin Peaks' series music. Amazing.

And a side-note on interesting interviews - A.V. Club has a lot of them.
ie: Amy Sedaris & Harmony Korine ..

as well as some sweet music reviews;

1. Les Savy Fav - Let's Stay Friends
2. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy
3. Bauhaus - Go Away White

..Each of these links contain samples of songs - they are not mp3s or anything, but you can listen while on each page.