Picturing Paris (1/38)

James Kraft
Prof. Letinsky
5/28/07

Learning a New Medium (2/38)

I had very little experience with photography before this course. My first week, therefore, was spent mostly experimenting with my camera. I thought it would be much more difficult photographing indoors because the sources of light would be much more direct and there would be so many more shadows.

My main focus was to make the most visually interesting photographs I could, given my near complete inexperience. I also wanted to incorporate the idea of the flaneur, the Paris arcades, and the Atget photographs we were looking at into my work. So I decided that I needed a place of commerce with natural light, reflective surfaces, and geometrically intricate elements.

Originally intending to head to the arcades at Montmarte, I was sidetracked by the beautiful vistas at Les Halles. This turned out to be a happy coincidence: Les Halles was much better suited to my needs then the Montmarte arcades would have been. At ten in the morning on a very clear day, there were nearly no shadows, very few people, and plenty of interesting architectural formations for me to compose into the visually interesting photographs I wanted to make.

The View From the Ledge (3/38)

I like this photograph because it’s interesting spatially. The fence in the foreground gives the viewer the sense of being in an interior space, looking out. The same kind of effect would be achieved, for instance, by a photgraph taken from the interior of a room through a window, just capturing the window sill in the bottom of the frame. Also, you can see through the portico on the far side of the pit to the street beyond, which adds depth, as well as adding to the mixed-up inside and outside feelings. It's also framed well pictorially, in the classical sense, since the light coming in from the upper left draws your eye to the vanishing point in the center of the photo.

Curves and Crossings (4/38)

I like how I managed to get the lines of this structure to continue in through their reflections on the windowpanes. I was trying to imitate the Atget storefront photographs, where he controls reflections on semitransparent surfaces to increase the apparent depth of his photographs. I also just enjoy looking at geometrical designs, for instance the way the curved lines in this shot part as you move out from the bottom left or clockwise from the top. With the flattening effect of the camera, I found I was able to add to this visual complexity by manipulating the way I framed the shot. Also, this isn’t really an image that the naked eye would rest on. You might catch a picture like this for a moment, glancing around, but fixing it in a frame allows you to let your eye travel along the lines without constantly distorting the image as a whole.

Churches (5/38)

The idea behind this picture is fairly simple and obvious. The church to the left is mirrored by the shopping center at Les Halles to the left - a “cathedral of commerce.” It’s also about the glaring incongruities of the architecture in this neighborhood, and therefore part of my broader effort to try and “Pictue Paris” in my photographs. Like in “The View From the Ledge,” I use the fence to narrativize the photograph. Focusing on a foreground object like that gives the viewer the feeling of being “in” the frame, looking out at the view, instead of looking “into” the view from outside the photograph.

Spatial Confusion #1 (6/38)

This is my first attempt to imitate the Atget photograph of the storefront window we looked at in class. I catch the reflection of the church in the window, and also the street beyond, which symbolizes Paris as an interior space. The man looking through the glass heightens the sense of interior - he's looking out at the viewer, through the glass, as the viewer is peering in at him through the frame of the photograph. His threatened, questioning expression - probably in reaction to the camera in my hand - also gives a sense to the photo that he is looking out at the viewer from it, as much as the viewer is looking in at him.

Spatial Confusion #2 (7/38)

This one is in the same vein as Spatial Confusion #1. Again, it attempts to echo the Atget photograph I mentioned. This time, it’s the prices and "rent a car" logo visible through the other side that symbolize the spatial transformation (inside/outside) of commercial space: in a store, you're inside an outside. This is both a public place where anyone can go, and an indoor space that excludes certain kinds of visitors. The reflection of the church, obviously, is another “cathedral of commerce”-type comment.

Seeing Photographically (8/38)

What I like about this one is the geometrical beauty of it, and the way it illustrates the monocular capacities of a camera. The varying degrees of focus, the way the focus varies over a plane, are very photographic: you would never see anything like it with a naked eye. It doesn’t have any over narrativization to it, but it’s a good example of the kinds of things I was trying first week, to feel out what I could make, visually.

Paris Arcades Shots (9/38)

We spent some time first week discussing the Paris arcades and reading Benjamin’s writings about them, so of course I made a little pilgrimage with my camera to see them for myself. What really struck me about them, though, was how empty and sad they are, now that it’s been more than 100 years since they were built. I tried to express a few different aspects of this feeling in the photographs I made there, a few of which I think turned out reasonably close to how I intended.

Mini-Mall (10/38)

This is a photograph about globalization, how it homogenizes our experiences. At the same time, it's very blank, there's no obvious judgment on this issue. It's just presented as a documentary fact in the signage. The man in the bottom-center helps carry this impression by giving the viewer someone to identify with besides me, the camera operator, so that he'll actually think about being in a space like this, instead of just thinking about looking at one - the opposite of the effect of the foreground fences in the Les Halles pictures. The steely flourescent grain of the photo expresses the mood of the arcade quite well also.

Not Even a Mouse (11/38)

There’s something very lonely about empty café tables, particularly in the busy middle evening period when this photo was taken. The idea of an arcade is that it showcases finery, that people are admitted to it - hence the gates, the suggestion of privacy. But without the people bustling through, there's really nothing there. That's what this is about. The one person walking away simply heightens the feeling of emptiness, as does the post card stand - who would want to send a post card from a place like this?

Early Graffiti Shots (12/38)

I became interested in photographing graffiti when I started looking for interesting photographs on my commute in the metro. I was thinking about how to picture my experience of the trains, and it occurred to me what a large part of the experience the graffiti was. I was also interested in doing so because of the Bruce Davidson photography we were looking at, including the Subway show of his, which I found online. The way the spaces in Subway are made dark and intimidating, but at the same time intimate, made me wonder about graffiti art and graffiti artists. I was lucky enough to meet a graffiti artist through a friend, who showed me some pieces and took me to a good spot third week - but more on that later. For now I was just trying to communicate a few things I noticed about the way graffiti changes spaces, or the way placement affects the meaning of an image.

Poster (13/38)

Spatially, the interesting point here is that I’ve removed the context. You can see clearly the multiple layers of tags that accumulated on this wall, as one tagger after another tried to claim it. The freshness or vibrancy of the inks, the wet look they have, communicates how frequent and recently this wall was tagged. The taggers have made this wall their own, made it private, but by making my one picture out of it, I’m claiming the wall, too, in a way.

Masterpiece #1 (14/38)

The aggressive and conflicting messages of these tags - “arsen,” “pasteur,” “peace” - communicate the troubled identity of the taggers responsible for them. The layering and cramming of them is a testament to the struggle of each tagger to express himself, and claim this space as an interior space, a space he owns. With the visual device of the advertising “frame” around these messages, I hope to re-present this work as something which should be taken seriously, perhaps not in its individual parts, but certainly in the composite whole that my photograph presents to the viewer.

Audrey Golightly (15/38)

I found this template-tag on the street on the Boulevard St. Germain as I was putting out a cigarette. Why would anyone bother to do such a thing? I think this question is honestly mysterious, but at the same time, it struck me that the figure of Holly Golightly could be placed nowhere more appropriate than the street of the Boulevard St. Germain. And then I wondered what Audrey Hepburn would think of it, how she felt about the way her image has been made use of. People seem to me to be constantly missing the point of characters like Holly Golightly, particularly when they appropriate their image to sell something. So I appropriated this one into my photographic frame as a joke - perhaps that is what Miss Golightly would have preferred, if not what Miss Hepburn would have.

Graffiti at the Frigos (16/38)

With my new interest in Graffiti, I decided to go to the Frigos and photograph some of the excellent work there. I found it perfect for my purposes. What was once a giant meat warehouse has been transformed into a vibrant hive of artistic community and life, and much of this transformation is due to the work of the taggers. By ornamenting every available nook and cranny of the common spaces with tags, emblems and illustrations, the taggers have turned a once dead, public, commercial space (literally, a cold space) into a lurid, dark, living space. The beautiful colors and interesting shadows gave me a lot to work with in constructing my photographic representation of this space. I hope with these photographs to effect the viewer in the same way that I was effected by the work I saw.

You’re Here/There You Are (17/38)

The “me” tag, quadruple underlined, in the upper center of this photograph is what I consider to be the paradigmatic graffiti message - “I was here, it was difficult to leave this mark, why would I have bothered?” The institutional façade and grey sky are the perfect backdrop for this message; they set precisely the right tone. The perspective of this shot is also interesting, compelling the roof to cut at precisely a 30 degreee angle from top left to middle right, so as to maintain a perfect verticle alignment along the left edge of the frame.

The Tageurs at Work (18/38)

One very rarely ever gets the chance to see graffiti artists at work, so it was very exciting for me to run into this crew at work on the side of the Frigos. In fact, they were mostly none too happy to see me, and certainly not to be photographed - this was one of the very few shots they permitted me to keep. I like the man flipping the peace sign’s pose, with legs crossed in mid-stride, and the sun-spot in the very center of the photograph, which keeps the representation obviously photographic and therefore authentic. Making use of the documentary capacity of the camera, this photo catches some taggers at an uncharacteristically friendly moment, in the hope that the viewer of it will better understand and tolerate graffiti and graffiti artists in future.

A Graffitist’s Self-Portrait (19/38)

The device here is fairly simple: the graffiti artist’s message is “I exist, this is who I am,” expressed through tags, whereas this tagger has expressed that this can of spray paint is literally what he is. Again, the multiple layers of tags suggest the struggle to establish this identity to me. The way the wall cuts away a little bit in from the right creates a very photographic effect, making the work more “real” by partaking of the documentary capacity of the photographic.

Chatterboxes (20/38)

The idea for this picture came from the ripped poster pieces we saw at the “Nouveau Reallissmo” show at the Palais Royal. There were plenty of ripped and mangled posters on the walls of the Frigos, so when I found a few I liked, I took a few of these types of photographs. Using the framing capacity of the camera, the way it marks of some particular space within itself, I was able to zoom in on some particularly part of displays; for instance the teeth here. Emotionally, it doesn’t really do anything for me, but the colors and the lines are very aggressive, yet balanced, so I find it very visually satisfying to look at.

Jacob’s Ladder (21/38)

I try to achieve the same vignetting effect that Atget accomplished by tipping the lens of his 8”x10” by actually tipping my entire camera up at an angle through a portico on the stairway. This shot might have been much better with a few passers by going up and down, but unfortunately, the fates did not oblige. Still, I think it documents very well how graffiti changes a space, making it more intimate but more intimidating at the same time. Again, the over-exposure in the bottom right makes the image obviously photographic, so that this picture partakes in some of the authenticity inherent in the documentary capacity of the camera.

Flash (22/38)

The title refers to the text of the graffito pictured, the “flash” of inspiration which a graffito represents, and also the fact that this was one of the very few photos I took with a flash. Again, the inspiration was the torn posters from the Palais Royal show. The photograph also documents several different kinds of tags - freehand, template and sticker tags - to show the innovation and competition to be heard in this art form, which again comes across in the multiple layers of work, competing for who gets to be on top, who gets to claim this space.

A Job Well Done (23/38)

I include this one because it’s one of the very few photos I took which includes a figure. The viewer is meant to identify with the subject, and think about what it would be like to inhabit a space like this. The “job well done” is the accomplishment of fully transforming a space through tagging, which I think was achieved here. A boring industrial façade is made interesting by vibrant use of color, and the interesting graphical representation of the elephant in the lower left.

Masterpiece #2 (24/38)

The effect of the overhead light and the framing of this picture suggests a picture you might make of a particularly good painting you saw at a museum. By re-presenting this marvelously vibrant work in this way, I’m arguing visually that this sort of artistic work is just as worthy of consideration. Part of the way graffiti transforms a space is to literally bring art into it, to make it a place where we can view art. This photograph suggests that, as viewers of art, we ought to take more seriously the art of the taggers when we are in a graphitized space.

Spycam - the View from My Room (25/38)

A large part of my experience of Paris was right through the window of my room, and I spent some time trying to capture the feeling of looking out through it, across at the park. One photo in these series does this specifically, but several others - made during a Segolene Royal rally that took place down the street - also problematize the meaning of this vantage point that we all possess in urban spaces, and the ability it gives us to look out on others. This is of course analagous to the capacity the camera gives us to frame and look out at the world; the distancing effect of the camera that Susan Sontag writes so much about.

Looking Out From In (26/38)

The warmth of the interior light contrasts with the cold, blue light through the window, communicating visually the sense of exposure associated with exterior space and the security of an indoor space. The objects littered around the room make the shot more visually interesting, and also document fairly well the life of the study abroad student. The sharp shadows on the wall make this photo distinctly photographic, and so therefore partake of photographic authenticity.

Nightfall (27/38)

I like the balanced composition of this shot, the way the blue fades to white across the top, and feeling of the warm blues and greens at this hour of the night. The blurred cars give a sense of motion which contrasts with the idyllic aspect of the park at night. Nightfall has this double aspect to it: it’s both when people rest, and when people who work get to be who they want, when many people are hurrying to get done what they’ve wanted to do all day.

The Mob (28/38)

I’ve always found mob scenes fascinating, but been terrified to photograph them. The vantage point of my window afforded me the chance to take this one. It’s more of an overview picture for this series, though, really - the shots to follow will mostly focus on details from this particular scene.

Liberty on the March (29/38)

The reference here is fairly obvious. There's a lot of movement in this photograph, in the posture of the boys and the flowing lines of the flag for instance. I was trying to portray that movement; I'm happy that it worked out.

Breaktime (30/38)

Scenes like this are always interesting to me. There’s the man passing out flyers, the boy taking orders by the food truck, the couple holding hands. I think it paints a much more complete picture of the rally to include this photo, showing people eating and taking a break. It combats the dehumanizing effect of being spied on.

Les Frics (31/38)

I always find European cops very frightening. They’re much more militarized then our cops generally are. I was happy, therefore, to catch this shot of them taking a break and having a coffee before setting off to work. At the same time, they are clearly much more racially homogenous and intimidating than the protesters. The viewer is meant to think about this - cops as people, people as cops.

Allons Enfants de la Patrie! (32/38)

Another flag-bearer. Same themes as the other one, mostly. They just seemed like such happy, cute boys, out having a good time on a beautiful day. It’s like “politics-as-a-picnic;” the pleasant, happy times of politics.

Bulls on Parade (33/38)

Again, just scary European cops. I was just trying to paint as complete a picture as I can of this crowd scene, really. It does strike me as visually interesting how differently they walk, though, which comes across in this. While there was something militaristic, certainly, about the flag-waving clusters in the crowd, the locked ranks of the cops contrasted sharply with the disordered, peaceful milling of the general public.

Playing with Spaces: Meeting Jean-Paul Reti (34/38)

This final series is a collection of playful shops I made in the workshop of artist/sculptor Jean-Paul Reti, at the Frigos. Reti makes map-like compositions featuring 3-dimensional elements that problematize our typical vision of urban spaces. The unique depth and texture of his work provides a novel opportunity to narrativize with the camera.

The Thinker (35/38)

I didn’t make many portraits because I was worried I didn’t have the skill to communicate moods with anything as malleable or visually complex as a human face. In this picture, however, I think I did a fairly good job communicating Reti’s “pensive” look. The mirror of his head in the monkey’s head behind him on the table is a bit of a self-conscious joke on his part that I wanted to share. The grounding of the shot on the flocked surface in the foreground was originally something I wanted to cut, but I ultimately decided that I rather enjoyed the tactile contrast it lends to the image.

Loneliness (36/38)

Reti’s work, with it’s perspectival complexity, is begging to be appropriated in this manner by the camera. By framing out and titling this image, I narrativized it. Obviously, the question is, who should be in that chair? How would it feel to sit in such a grey moonscape?

Tree on Moonscape (37/38)

I guess by re-flattening Reti’s exploded maps I’m re-problematizing his conceptual rethinking of urban maps. After all, you can communicate depth with a shadow, as I try to do here, or with a texture, as in “ The Thinker.”

The End (38/38)

That's it! Hope you enjoyed my project.

-j.

The Tageur's Work: Graffiti in Les Frigos

Les Frigos is infested with graffiti. Seemingly every square inch is covered in layer upon layer of tags and illustrations. Interestingly, even though the space is dark and the colors are glaring, the effect is not off-putting or unfriendly. There has been remarkably little conflict between the residents and the graffiti artists, even though it would seem that the territory is disputed between them. It seems there's a bit of a Darwinian element to this. No one dares paint over the better-looking stuff, while the commoner work is constantly being covered and recovered. The final result is a gallery of images and colors, suffusing what little natural light filters into the place with a warm, friendly glow.

Here's the view from the stairs on the third floor:


Here's the heavenly spiral stairs:



Here's my girlfriend, sitting under some very well decorated water pipes:



What little conflict there was over the tags appears to have been centered over their tendency to cover over names on doors and mailboxes. Here's a typical example:



. . . And here's how sculptor Jean-Paul Reti has finally managed to respond to the onslaught on his name tag:

Meeting Jean-Paul Reti

Jean-Paul Reti is an artist at the Frigos who has worked in New York, Arizona and France making sculptures, paintings and installation art. He was instrumental in the reorganization of the Frigos which took place in the early 90's, and continues to work with them and other art collectives around the world to establish and maintain space for urban artists.

Reti's art makes use of perspectivel techniques to give a sense of depth to what would otherwise be bird's eye view oriented depictions of landscape, both rural and urban. His work tends to be map-like, so that viewed straight on, hanging on the wall, it is as if one is looking down from above. Horizontal elements coming out from the plane of the picture are illuminated with lights to create shadows, so that the perspective of someone inhabiting one of the spaces he depicts is made clear. Thus the viewer is presented with an interlocking formulation of space both from above and from alongside, as if the map maker's and the flaneur's perspective were united in one work of art.

Photographing his work presented me with unique challenges and opportunities. Particularly in his studio, which is lit entirely without natural light, capturing the total effect of the shadows and relief is difficult. The low ISO setting on my camera tended to capture the form of the pieces well enough, but lost the sharp contrast of the shadows, while high ISO setting caught the shadows well but flattened the perspective. I decided instead to use the monocular eye of my camera to "peep in" to his work, trying to find interesting photographic space within the larger context of the paintings. One piece in particular, a textured tabletop with a tree, an easy chair and a constantly girating magnetic field of steel filaments, was very easy to vignette in this manner.

Here's one shot, taken from below and to the left, of one of his wall-hung pieces:


Here's my "take" on his tabletop piece:



Here's a more documentary perspective on the table, as one is meant to see it, seated at it:


And here's my favorite shot of Jean-Paul, also from across the table:

"You Can Can Cannes, Apparantly"

On Wednesday, I attended an event at Le Bon Marché to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the first Cannes film festival, billed as a photo exhibition. Indeed, marvelously blown up photographs of various film luminaries were exhibited, yet I was left cold by it all. The photographs were merely documentary. True, the people depicted in them were notable, but essentially they gave me the impression of being a catalog of other people's summer vacation photos. As a friend of mine observed, it was like sampling "canned Cannes."

Still, on the way in I snapped a fairly good shot of the street running by Le Bon Marché, and I wanted to share it here. I like how the yellow light and the yellow sign contrast with the cool blue of the evening sky, and the crowdedness of the vanishing point on the lower left contrasting with the blank facade. The illusion of depth to the photographic space comes across strongly.

Meet the Tageurs

My friend Rodolphe, a graffiti artist, was unable to take me out to the peripherique to see his work this week. However, several friends of his were at the Frigos this weekend when I happened to be coming by to visit. Initially, no one noticed my camera, and I took several interesting shots of the "tageurs" at work, but when I was discovered I had to delete most of them.

Despite the questionable legality of their work, I was very surprised that the taggers were so virulently opposed to being photographed. After all, these are people who have made an art form out of writing one's name on the wall. Every piece of graffiti art I have ever seen has cried out, above all, "I exist, I was here." It is clear, if this is so, that photography is perceived as more than a simply documentary art by the graffiti artist. If it were merely documentary, a photograph would reemphasize this claim.

I think the issue, besides legality, is a resistance to being appropriated, to being nostalgized. Graffiti declares itself in opposition to the owners of property, to the authorities. To be photographed at work by an art student would be paramount to inclusion in a dialogue towards which these artists have defined themselves by opposition and resistance. The work can only exist in temporary form. To make it permanent, as I've tried to do by photographing it, commodifies the art in a way which is inimical to its spirit.

Still, the images are beautiful and the spaces they create are unique. I am very interested by the camera's powers of exploration, and in order to explore with a camera, you need a photographic space. So while I think I'm coming to understand why the graffiti artists are resistant to being photographed at work, I will continue photographing that work in order to create my own.

Here is the only shot of them all together which I was allowed to keep:

Early Experiments

When I first started this project, I spent a little time messing with the settings on my digital camera, and doing some basic editing in iPhoto. I took about 50 pictures of this one very brightly colored towel in my room with different sources of light and effects and so on, to try and see what they all did. Later that day, I found a spray painted portrait of Audrey Hepburn on the sidewalk of the Blvd. St. Michel, and had a little fun trying to photograph it. Here are some of the more attractive results of my early experiments

Here's that d!#$n towel I was talking about.. I include this solely for documentary purposes:


And here's my favorite of the Audreys, after some tinkering in iPhoto to adjust the contrast and light balance:

Paris Graffiti (first part)

I'm fascinated by graffiti, and particularly by photographing graffiti, because it's by definition such a temporary, irreproducible form. The entire point is that it's an authentic original, that's why most graffiti is simply the name of the artist responsible. So I'm not really sure what it means to photograph a tag - you can't "take" such a shot, it really stays there on the wall. This blog would be a very incomplete documentary of my time here, however, if I did not include shots of graffiti from time to time. So I will do so, regardless of my higher thought on the subject.

These are just some simple shots I took early in the week, trying to figure out how to get the colors to come out right in low-light conditions. It's particularly tough when the tag's on a semi-reflective surface. More interesting shots to come, after I make a field trip with a local graffiti artist I met who knows "good spots . . ."

I like how the pink contrasts with the really drippy black in this one:


Good little peace tag here, and I think I composed this well:


This one was on tile, which made it hard to get:



Here's a tag my friend Rodolphe is working on. It's on paper now, he's hoping to do it up for real this coming weekend:

The Arcades

The arcades, I felt, were really rather sad. They've lost the classy hustle and bustle they must have had back when they were first built, and all that's left now is a sort of generalized nostalgia. I tried to show this in my photographs by capturing the empty feeling of them with long parallel lines, signs, and boutique windows full of knick knacks. It's very difficult, I discovered, to shoot through glass without getting any reflection or blur, but by turning down the shutter speed and propping the camera up on something stable I got at least one boutique window through-shot to come out.

Here's a shot with a "route 66" and a "coca cola" sign, as well as an Indian and a Chinese restaurant, which shows how generalized-touristy the arcades have become:


Here's a very empty shot with good light:



In this one you can see where the old, curved arch was that must have supported the old wrought iron windows. A higher, plainer, triangular skylight pattern has been substituted since:


And here's an Arcade by night: