Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée: Monday 17th November 2008 was the last day of our stay in Paris where I had come with my wife for a week for me to go to Paris Photo and for the two of us to enjoy the city and the huge number of photographic shows that were taking place there. On My London Diary you can read PARIS SUPPLEMENT, my diary of our week there.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008 Rue de Tanger, 19e
Rue de Tanger, 19e

We had arrived in Paris the previous Monday and the first thing we did on arriving there was to buy our weekly tickets – then Carte Orange – for bus and metro transport across the city – incredible value for those used to UK transport prices.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008
Parc de Buttes Chaumont

But that of course had finished on Sunday. And the only real way to see any city is on foot, so we decided to spend the day before our Eurostar train left for London at 17.13 taking a walk around some of our favourite places, booking out but leaving our cases in the hotel foyer to collect later.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008 Le Voltigeur on the courner of rue des Couronnes
Le Voltigeur on the courner of rue des Couronnes

As you will see from the pictures here we first made our way to Paris’s most fantastic park, Buttes Chaumont, a former gypsum quarry and waste tip converted into gothic fantasy, and then on to Belleville.

Buttes Chaumont and Belleville Traversée 2008

Earlier in our stay we had visited the Bar Floreal where I had been given a free copy of a small book produced some years earlier for a show there by Willy Ronis (1910-2009), one of my several favourite photographers of Paris, ‘la traversée de Belleville’ which describes his favourite walk around the area.

Rue Laurence Savart, 20e
Rue Laurence Savart, 20e

Linda was keen to use this and find exactly the scenes in his pictures, while I was more interested in making my own pictures, and had followed a quite similar route some years earlier. But it was interesting to see it through his eyes, although considerable redevelopment had changed the area since he walked it in 1990. And more since 2008.

Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e
Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e

Rather more atmospheric than my pictures is the video which Ronis appears and speaks about some of his pictures in made at the time of the show in 1990.

Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e
Rue de la Fontaine au Roi, 11e

Unfortunately the restaurant ‘Aux Monts D’Auvergne’ at which we ate a splendid three course lunch had been replaced by another by the time we next came to Paris. After the large meal we struggled a little but did just about manage to finish the ‘Traversée’, walk back to the hotel to collect our luggage and catch our train and were back home on the outskirts of London by 8pm.

Canal St Martin
Canal St Martin

There is more detail about the day in the text on My London Diary as well as in the picture captions – and as usual many more pictures.

Buttes Chaumont / Belleville Traversée


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Paris 2010

Ten years ago today I was in Paris, having arrived there for Paris Photo two days earlier on Wednesday 17th, where after queing to get my accreditation I attended the opening of the event. I didn’t much enjoy it – too many reminders that I wasn’t a VIP and too many cliques around most of the gallery stands, though I did meet just a few old friends in the crowds.

But it was too crowded and too hot and I was pleased to leave early and meet my wife for a rather good meal in a Latin Quarter restaurant and then a short walk around the centre of Paris before taking the Metro to our hotel room in the Goutte-d’Or. You can read more about my initial thoughts on the show in a long blog here on >Re:Photo, and there are a few more pictures on My London Diary.

Thursday after breakfast and a short move to another hotel there was plenty of time to take a leisurely walk and some photographs on my way to Paris Photo which opened at 11am.

The pictures I made on the walk are I think rather more interesting than those inside Paris Photo, and a couple of hours inside the show were enough for the day – and I wrote about it at some length for readers of >Re:PHOTO, as well as a more general piece Thoughts on Paris Photo.

I met my wife for a pleasant lunch and then we began a tour of photo exhibitions in the 3e – and I wrote about some of them here, as well as taking more pictures on our walk.

The highlight of our day was the opening of Brian Griffin’s The Black Country, and again I posted a lengthy piece here on >Re:PHOTO.

We finished the day at a fine Party, hosted by Jim and Millie Caspar of Lensculture in their flat on the rue Saint Antoine, and after a few glasses of champagne I couldn’t stop myself taking more pictures. There was also a room set up as a studio where all the guests were invited to take photographs of themselves. On this site I mainly talk about the technical details, but there are again more pictures in my diary.

We had to leave early at around 11.30 to take the Metro back to our hotel, but the party was still going strong. I slept well that night after a long day, and the following morning was out again for another wander around Ménilmontant and Belleville in the north-east of the city until lunchtime. Again you can see more on >Re:PHOTO and in my diary.

I’ll end with a picture I took in Paris Photo (there are more online.) The face reflected in the towel-holder looks rather as if a man is wearing a mask (or just a gag), though it is just a label. As I walked into the toilettes pour hommes another photographer was taking his self-portrait in the rather fancy mirrors.

(to be continued in a later post)


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.