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:

Les Halles

On my way to the arcades on Montmartre, I was side tracked (like a good flaneur) into a little trip through Les Halles to the Pompidou, to get a Croque Madame at the Cavalier Bleu. Les Halles, I think, is the modern equivalent to the old Paris Arcades. Arched glass and steel provide natural light in its upper floors, and the whole structure is laid out internally to mirror a busy market square. It was too early for me to get any good crowd shots, so I took some outdoor shots. I tried to capture the angle of the light on the various geometric shapes formed by the buildings first, then I got sidetracked into attempting to take some "mirror" shots with a large plate glass window I found. I also attempted a couple shots with a large, old-fashioned gothic structure on one side of the frame, and a modern equivalent on the other. Later I wandered to the Pompidou and took a few shots up the large steel stairs there, trying to get some interesting layers happening.

Here's my favorite general "morning at Les Halles" shot. Note how the three curvilinear structures on the left line up to make an "S":

This is my favorite "light on cool looking building" type shots. I lined up the white curved arches with the green portico, like in the last shot with the stairs, but the part I like is the little triangle panels on the building in the background, the way they catch the angle of the light coming in from the upper left:


Then I thought this might be a better way to frame it:


Again, just trying to get the most interesting geometrical combinations in one frame:



Here's an attempt at a new/old mirror shot, divided down the middle:


Here's an attempt at a mirror shot. I got the church to reflect over a window, and you can see the street beyond through the window as well:


Here's my favorite of the steel stairs photos I took at the Pompidou:

Welcome to my blog!

This blog (for now) will serve as my final project for "Picturing Paris." I will post at least once a week with updates, including my 10 favorite pictures of the week (assuming there are 10!) and captions explaining what I'm attempting to do with each shot. I hope you'll enjoy it!

-j.