Richard

“I have always viewed every area of photography — reportage, illustration, fashion, advertising, portraits, and personal work — as a pretext for traveling and meeting people, a way of life, and a means of self-expression.” 
~ Sabine Weiss

“I mean planning and chance seem almost to be the same thing.”
~ Robert Smithson

To talk about Lyon I have to talk about what’s already happened. This trip has turned out to be so many things but, much to my surprise, it’s been a miraculous journey of chance, and something of a photographic odyssey. I had vague notions of trying to investigate Paris to see if any good photography shows were happening. But I did very little planning or research. Instead, by chance, we have fallen into one illuminating show after another. The first was Made in Chicago, a small show of black and white work centered around photographers who either worked or lived there. That was at La Galerie Rouge in the fourth. 

Then – chance again – came Boris Mikhailov at the  Maison Européenne de la Photographie. In Letter #2, I talked about the 800 print retrospective by one of Ukraine’s greatest living artists.

There was more work right around the corner from our apartment in the Marais. Polka is a photo center here. They publish a magazine, they have a small, well designed exhibition space and a bookstore. The day I went, (after happening upon the space by chance) they were showing a Russian photographer, Alexander Gronsky.

I loved this work so much I asked the staff if they could translate the show’s information sheet and they spent half an hour working it out and then handed me a sheet — in English — that talked about how Alexander works and how he balances his image making instincts against intense political constraints. “My work is deliberately neutral. I prefer that it remains so that it does not turn into propaganda, for anyone.” I’ve since learned he was arrested and briefly detained after protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (The excerpt below is from .coda.com, and not from the show. In the same interview he revealed that his mother views him as a traitor.)

“As a Russian person I feel powerless, ashamed and furious about everything that’s going on. I cannot influence it in any way and I perfectly understand that blame as a result will be put on everything Russian: Russian culture, Russian language and that in the nearest hundred years people will not make films about Nazis, but about awful Russians. Overnight, from being strange, mysterious, aggressive, foolish people we turned into monsters and we will not be able to wash this blame off for a very long time, it’s terrible. I am afraid that my son will hide the fact that he is half Russian when he grows up.”

~Alexander Gronsky

We didn’t plan for chance to play such a role in all of this, but chance has been walking with us down every cobblestone street and up every punishing hill, to deliver one pregnant moment after another. Chance took us by the hand and worlds have opened up.

The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation (nearby in the Marais) mounted a beautiful show of Jan Groover’s work. I knew some of her pictures from years back, but only a sliver. I hadn’t realized she is one of the medium’s truly great artists. I think of her as the traveler in this Antonio Machado poem.

Traveler, your footprints

By Antonio Machado

Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road;
only a ship’s wake on the sea.

Jan Groover made her own path, again and again. She did whatever she wanted to do; still life’s, conceptual work, portraits. She worked in platinum for a while. Everyone knows Cindy Sherman, but Jan Groover is easily her contemporary, but is less well known, I think, because she was so restless—she experimented with everything. With Cindy Sherman, you know it’s her right away.

If that weren’t enough, there was a terrific show (again, found by chance, around the corner in the Marais) at the Mexican Cultural Institute. They were showing the work of the Mexican and Franco-Hungarian photographer, Nadja Massun, (1963-2022). This was classic black and white documentary work with some truly memorable pieces.

Onto Lyon. The train from Paris to Lyon was strangely quiet and quick. (Perhaps because we had booked the quiet car?) No one spoke. An hour into the journey, I looked out the window, and to my great surprise, snow.

A confection upon the fields of France? I realized much later, it was a foretelling. The gods had dusted the world white at precisely the right place—on the way to Lyon, the gastronomical capital of France. Like all the other children on the train, I pressed my face against the glass to stare at the wonder flying past and to store the beauty in my memory. (And on my iPhone.)

What were the chances? Arrival in Lyon. A swarming mass of humanity. A cold, big city train station, foreign and funky. My stomach rumbled. By chance I’d booked a houseboat for our Airbnb. I’d been given a set of clear, specific directions I could barely make sense of. Beyond the station the city clanged and churned. Sleet blew in furious horizontal sheets. It was absolutely freezing. Somewhere in Lyon was Tram No. 1. Tram No. 1 would take us to a bus. The bus would take us to the houseboat on the Saône river. A warm dry bed would be waiting.

Small miracles. The houseboat was found. Locals pointed this way then that, and after what seemed like the trek of the damned, (the walking in circles, the tram, more walking in circles, the luggage, more walking, the argument, the sleet, the wind, the bus), the houseboat appeared and we were welcomed on board. There was more than a warm bed waiting. So much more. 

Our Airbnb hosts would turn out be Florence and Gil Lebois. Gil was a fine art photographer and how could he not be? Chance was now fully in charge of this operation. Gil was an exceptionally fine, fine art photographer too, the best of his kind. Technically skilled at portraits, landscapes, with an unusually good touch with people. Creative and possessed of a sensitive heart. (By which I mean he was and is, an artist. He has left still photography behind and turned to video.) He is a voracious reader and lived for years in America making photographs. It was surprising and not surprising at all then, that we both loved many of the same photographers. 

There was a glorious dinner in La Croix-Rousse, Lyon’s Arts District. There was laughter and wine and incredible food and stories. There was friendship too, which is more sustaining than food, books, photographs, snow, travel, trams, buses, cathedrals, or the sea. They loved Genoa, they said. Come to Whidbey Island, we said. 

So now I am leapfrogging over a few places (Orvieto, Florence, Umbria, Genoa) because I want to talk a little bit about photography, and chance, and the Swiss born photographer and longtime Paris resident Sabine Weiss, and her notions about photography. 

I wasn’t familiar with Sabine; not her name, or her work. I certainly didn’t know there was a retrospective of her life’s work in town at the Palazzo Ducale. But as we wandered the caruggi of Genoa, we looked up at one point and the image you see above, that gypsy girl, was staring us in the face. It was probably 30’ across, affixed to a brick wall. This massive, beautiful thing. And so we went in. Linda noticed Sabine’s words about photography being a pretext for meeting people, for travel, for self-expression. As a way of life.

As a younger man, I had very serious ambitions around photography. I wanted to be the next Robert Frank. Or the next Atget. Or Koudelka, or Josef Sudek, or any number of practitioners. I wanted books with my name on the cover. I wanted gallery shows. (Gil Lebois always wanted to be a writer.) I wasn’t wise enough to understand photography could be a means to a rich life, a way in, a way forward, a road to walk down to find other people, to hear their stories, to be invited into their lives. It was the supremely talented photographer Sabine Weiss, a member of the French Humanists, who combined photo reportage with street poetry, who taught me this. It was 2023, in Genoa, when we met in the street by chance—and it was pure poetry. Traveler, your footprints.

She died in Paris, at the same address she’d maintained her entire adult life. She credited her long and amazing career to a series of chance encounters and happy accidents. Au revoir, Sabine. Merci.

In Mauritian, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old postcards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Mauritian, when compared to the old, provincial Mauritian, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old postcards, whereas before, when that provincial Mauritian was before one’s eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Mauritian had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

~ from Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (Cities & Memory 5)

More to the point. I don’t know how to see this city. Making pictures in a situation like this, in a city like this, isn’t exactly doomed, but it’s weird. I don’t know this place. I think it helps to know a place before photographing it. I do not wish to disappoint the inhabitants.

Still, a traveler can make some nice pictures here. Given the intense beauty everywhere you look, you simply keep your eyes and heart open, keep moving, stay on the lookout for the light, and try to stand (sort of) in the right place. And then hope for the best. If all else fails, steal from the masters. If an image needs a touch of lipstick, there’s always the last minute rescue, the guilty pleasure, the cheap trick of the Instagram filter. (I like Crema, Juno, and sometimes Inkwell.)

Among the photographers I care about and love most in the world are two men who made so many memorable pictures of Paris it’s like they created the city in theIr viewfinders and poof there was Paris for all the world to see and visit and love. They didn’t just know Paris, they were Paris. The first is Andre Kertész, who was born in Budapest, but moved here in 1925. He didn’t know exactly why he came here, but he has said, “he had to come.” (And there you were wondering to yourself if Andre Kertész was a romantic by nature.) By 1927, his reputation was flying so high over the city’s chimney pots he became the first photographer in Paris to have a solo show. Kertész had bought one of the first Leica’s in Paris and in every way, in the late 1920s, Andre was the man. On the night of his one man show at Au Sacre de Printemps, Józef Śliwiński, a Polish classical pianist performed, and the Dadaist poet, Paul Dermée, read this piece below, created for the occasion.

KERTESZ
By Paul Dermee, 1927 

(Translated by Jill Anson)

his child’s eyes see each thing for the first time;
they see a great king naked when he is dressed in lies; they are frightened by the canvas-shrouded phantoms
who haunt the banks of the Seine;
innocently they delight in new pictures made by three sunlit chairs in the Luxembourg Gardens, Mondrian’s door opening onto a staircase, Eyeglasses tossed near a pipe on a table.
there is no method, no arrangement, no deception, no embroidery,
your style as true your vision.
in this asylum for the blind, Kertesz sees for us.

From left to right: Montmartre, Paris, Andre Kertesz | Gypsy Children Kissing, Esztergom, Hungary, 1917, Andre Kertesz

He sailed away to a stupid job and a country that couldn’t have cared less who he was, or how loving and beautiful and intelligent his eye was. Years later, around the mid 1970s, the world finally woke up and realized oh my god Andre Kertész is still with us—we better start paying attention. And then came the one man shows again — but this time in America, in New York, at MOMA—right where he belonged. It was then, as his bitterness had begun to lift, that his beloved wife Elizabeth died after a long bout with lung cancer. Maybe the lesson is to never leave Paris.

Images top left to right: Chez Mondrian 1926, Paris, Andre Kertesz | Modrian’s Glasses and Pipe, 1926, Paris, Andre Kertesz | Tuileries, Paris, Andre Kertesz | Eiffel Tower, 1929 Paris, Andre Kertesz

Andre Kertesz had no formal art training—he found his own way. He served as a photographer in the First World War, got injured and made pictures (Google The Swimmer by Kertesz) during his convalescence. There is charm and music and love for the world in nearly every single Kertész photograph. There’s a deep and intuitive understanding of what a photograph is and can be. Paul Dermee had it right. No method, no arrangement, no deception, no embroidery. (And no Instagram filters). Henri Cartier Bresson said, “Every time Andre Kertész’ shutter clicks, I feel his heart beating.” You look at the pictures today and you can feel that beating heart still. He created Paris. The one that is here right now today, and the one in the postcards, too.

In the very same year that Andre Kertesz got his one man show, Eugene Atget died. During the previous thirty years that he photographed Paris, Eugene Atget never once had an exhibition of his work. Least of all one that involved a classical pianist and a Dadaist poet. (He would have flown out of that scene as fast as his French legs could take him.) 

Atget lost his parents as a young boy, became a merchant marine for a while, took a turn as an actor and traveled around France with a small repertory company. Around age forty, he picked up a camera and set about documenting one of the great cities of the world, and in so doing, became one of the most beloved, inspired practitioners to ever make pictures. And it wasn’t just any camera he picked up, it was a massive bellows camera, that along with tripod and plates, pushed 40 pounds. He lugged that kit all over the place for three decades. Atget is the one who shows you where the bandstand used to be, the one where the overpass is now, covered in graffiti.

From SciHi.org:

Around 1897, Atget’s customers were the architects and artisans who wanted examples of old architectural models as well as the amateurs of the ancient city who deplored the modernization projects of Napoleon III and his agent, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann who had razed and rebuilt much of Paris during the last half of the 19th century. Atget also sold his pictures to illustrators and independent painters.

Images top left to right: #1 Arbre Trianon 1919-1921 | Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevieve | Hotel de Barbancois, Rue de Quatre Fils 20 | Ville d’Avray – Etang de Corot | Parc Delessert, 32 Quai de Passy | Buttes Chaumont, 1926 | Hotel Lepelletier Saint-Rargeau, Rue de Savigne

To say why is futile but I’ll try anyway. I love the work of Atget and Kertesz because their pictures are lyrical and elegant and they do more than describe, they evoke. Turning the pages of their books is like turning the pages of memory and imagination itself. We are all indebted to Eugene and Andre, who made music out of parks and trees, fountains and alleyways, rivers and staircases, and left us these beautiful images to live by.

~~

Looking ahead, how do I even begin to talk about Lyon? I’ll have to think long and hard because Lyon was pure magic. For tonight, we lay our heads down in a very quiet, very beautiful room. A few steps away, across the center of town, is the Duomo of Orvieto, one of the most beautiful in all of Italy. This traveler has been here before. One night many years earlier, he found himself in a wine cave with a dozen travelers all from his own hometown. Everyone ate rabbit stew and got roaring drunk.

“To the memory of the children – students of this school deported from 1942 – 1944 because they were born Jewish. Victims of the Nazi barbarity with the active complicity of the Vichy government. They were exterminated in the death camps. Let us never forget them. October 5, 2002.”

“In memory of the young girls brought up in this establishment, formerly a sewing school in the city of Paris, deported and murdered from 1942 to 1944 because they were born Jews, innocent victims of Nazi barbarism with the active complicity of the Vichy government. More than 11,400 children were deported from France including more than 500 living in the 3rd arrondissement in Paris. They were exterminated in the death camps. Simone Weill high school students will never forget them.”

Moving through the city over these past weeks, I can’t help noticing that there’s a lot going on a few floors down inside of me. Up at street level, I am struck by how rich and beautiful the city is. The shop windows, the architecture. The boucherie. The traiteur. The boulangerie. The cafes. The fashion you see everywhere. Modern Europe flowing past like some eternal river. But there’s a subterranean zone within me that got activated in this foreign country. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s about coming into contact with place and time and culture in a way that is beyond language, beyond words. Something is happening at the cell level. I am here, I am away from home; alert in a new way, primed for adventure, open (hopefully) to new input, new sensations—food, visual stimuli, people, stories, art. A new sense of self. What is this place? And who am I in this place? This is why we travel. 

One recurring motif I have felt from the beginning here is a sense of the history of Paris. (Warning, I’m a poor historian.) My mind freezes at the juxtaposition of a city this beautiful, this cultured, this elegant, being occupied by Nazis. The city of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Monet, of Simone de Beauvoir and Apollinaire, of Atget and Andre Kertesz, of Edith Piaf and Degas, of Marcel Proust, and countless others. It’s too hideous, beyond imagining. But it happened and even worse, the French were complicit. Those plaques all over the city—every one of them says it—with the active complicity of the Vichy government. It’s not just a deeply uncomfortable story, it’s monstrous.

When the nightmare came, it came fast. It took just six weeks for France to fall. From my readings, the German forces were vastly superior on multiple levels. They launched a bold attack. The highly regarded French Army (and Allied forces) weren’t ready, weren’t fast enough, and got outflanked. A million and a half French soldiers were taken prisoner. Over 100,000 French soldiers died in the fighting. France’s Marshall Philippe Pétain, (a WWI hero) asked for a cessation of hostilities and then came this… 

“The Franco- German Armistice of June 22, 1940. Surrender. Hitler insisted on signing the document of capitulation in the same railway carriage used when Germany had surrendered in 1918. The humiliation of France was complete.”

— From The Fall of France, by Dr Gary Sheffield

There are certainly hundreds, if not thousands of terrible stories about collaboration — and to this day, France is still dealing with all of this. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the French state accepted responsibility for the actions of the Vichy government and began to make amends.

I am fairly certain that I moved through this next story as we visited the Shoah Memorial Le Marais yesterday, but there was an astonishing amount to take in and I think I missed it. I’m talking about the most ghastly moment in the city’s history of complicity…this is the story of René Bousquet. 

“Assassinated in 1993, before he could go to trial, Bousquet was accused of coordinating with the Gestapo to organize the largest round-up of Jews in Paris. In July 1942, 13,000 Jews (including 3,000 children) were gathered at the Vel’ d’Hiv’ bicycle stadium in the 15th Arrondisement, from which they were shipped to French transit camps, and from there to Auschwitz. Part of the public’s attention focused on the French justice system. The French press had reported Bousquet’s role in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ round-up as early as 1978, but it took twelve years for French courts to take up the case filed by French Jewish organizations.”
— From the Brookings Institute

Beyond Bousquet, two vile, notorious figures have achieved infamy in this tale. They are Pierre Laval, a politician, and  Marshal Philippe Pétain, the aforementioned French hero of WWI. Between the two of them, they led the Vichy government and aided the Gestapo as they rounded up Jews by the thousands. Both were sentenced to death after the war. De Gaulle commuted the death sentence of Pétain, as a means of honoring his service to the nation in WWI. But after the war he spent the remainder of his life in prison. 

This is all to say that we visited the Shoah Memorial Le Marais yesterday. It was an utterly profound and shattering experience. In the image below look at the name ESKENAZI and note how many were taken. As we moved through these carved names outside the Shoah Memorial every letter was the same. You’d see entire families, and extended families, listed.

“Is Paris burning?” This is what Hitler asked General Dietrich von Choltitz when the end finally came. It wasn’t. Hitler’s order to burn the place to the ground was ignored. (Choltitz ignored the order and had tried later to claim that he was largely responsible for Paris remaining intact. It’s a more complicated story and his role is not quite the noble moment he claims it is.)

So as I wind this down I just want to take a moment…I want to pay homage to those who suffered and to those who defeated the Nazis. As I walk the streets, as I take pictures, as I notice the historical markers on the way to coffee, as I peruse the work of photographer Jan Groover at the Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation, and as I visit the Shoa Memorial that tells of the horrors that took place here, I want to reflect and I want to remember. So many thousands of people known and unknown, famous and lost to history, took unimaginable risks and did what needed to be done to stop the madness. So all of us can walk these narrow and beautiful and crowded streets. So we can experience the wonder that is Paris.