All ready to go to Paris
I think that I’ve now sorted out my trip to Paris for Paris Photo next month, along with my interpreter (not that I really need one, but my wife’s French is more than considerably better than mine, and both of us are extremely fond of the city.) I’ve sent off for my accreditation, booked a hotel room (at the same hotel as last time, which isn’t perfect but is cheap), booked my tickets on Eurostar – of course I’m not flying.
Pont des Arts, Paris, November 2008
Although we met in Manchester rather than Paris, my wife and I spent our first holiday together there a couple of years before we were married, sleeping in separate twin rooms in a student hostel a nine miles south of the city centre in Massy-Verrières, then a rather large building site on the Luxembourg line, although we were in the older part of the town. It’s the only year I’ve been in France to celebrate Bastille Day, where we went to the celebrations on the main square there, where people really did dance to accordion music in the streets.
We went back there a few years ago on the day when the Tour de France was finishing on the Champs-Élysées, catching a train back to the centre which should have got us there in time to see it. Unfortunately the line came to a halt around 25 minutes before the cyclists arrived, with the driver settling down in a signal box to watch the finish.
You can read about my last visit to the Mois de la Photo in 2008 in a series of articles under the heading PARIS SUPPLEMENT. As well as the trade show, Paris Phot, with dealers from around the world showing the work of their photographers, their are exhibitions across the city in the ‘Mois del la Photo’ and even more shows in the fringe festival. For a month, but particular around the few days of Paris Photo, the city is really alive to the sound or rather sight of photography.
In 2008, apart from Paris Photo, which is a great opportunity to see work by established photographers from around the world, I got to see around 40 other exhibitions, as well as attending several openings and a few other parties, meeting many photographers from around the world I already knew and other new faces.
One of the fringe shows was on the landings of a social housing block,
Cité des trois fushias, 20e
You can see many more of my pictures from Paris on my Paris photos site, although not from that 1966 visit, when I dropped my camera in a lake!
This woman was walking along a back street in Montmartre in 1973.
If any of you reading this are going to be in Paris at any time between Nov 17-22 I’d be delighted to meet you – and if you are having an opening I’ll do my best to be there and to write about the work. You can e-mail me at petermarshall(at)cix.co.uk – or add a comment here.