Paris, Je t'aime!

The CITY, not the socialite!

Is it possible to love a place you've never been? Cause if so, I loooooove Paris. I've been to France and French Polynesia, but Paris is a completely different story. Fashion capital, City of Lights, by whatever name it is a place I've been to many times via books and movies, but never actually been. I've been spending the last month dreaming of Paris and trying to figure out how to get there.

Why, you may ask, do I love a place so much that you've never actually been? It's simple, really. I love fashion, history, art, architecture, collecting vintage ephemera, yummy food with lots of butter, black and white photography, and movies. Paris is pretty much fantastic at all those things!

Of course, not everyone can jet off to Paris whenever they want. So, to help you, and in honor of Bastille Day, I've compiled everything you need for a bit of Paris at home.

Movies:
I know purists are going to hate me because almost none of these movies are actually French... maybe it is a Dream Paris instead of a real one you'll love just like me. In no particular order:
1. French Kiss
2. Amelie
3. Sex and the City (series finale, both parts - not technically a movie but a must)
4. Ratatouille (okay, we're really stretching it on the realism here, but I love this one!)
5. Julie and Julia
6. Marie Antoinette (the Sophia Coppola film)

Food:
As Julia Childs would say, think BUTTER! Living in LA, I admit I'm totally spoiled and have access to some fantastic restaurants, bakeries, and other French goodies that those outside a major city probably don't have. Don't worry, I've thought of you, too!
1. French Restaurants - my favs in LA are Comme Ca and Annisette - if you don't live near LA you can look up in Zagat or Opentable.com to find a local eatery
2. Get fresh baked French bread from your local bakery. Preferably eat outside on your porch or something with a glass of red wine and some wonderful cheese.
3. OR you can DIY! Here would be my menu for at home French food dinner loveliness:
a. Steak Frite - 'nuff said.
b. As a twist, cook your Pomme Frite in a little truffle oil. Yum! Then add garlic and truffle oil to the mayonnaise you dip the fries in. Double yum!
c. Dessert: Macaroons. I'd order mine from Paulette's, but you can easily make your own. The French never skip dessert!
4. For breakfast or snack, crepes, my friend. "really thin pancakes" as Jean Girard would say - if
you don't recognize that because you haven't seen the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, just ignore.
Can you tell I look up recipes religiously on the Food Network online???

Books/Magazines:
I say, read up on some interesting French people (or people who lived there)!
1. Julia Child - My Life in France
2. Marie Antionette - Queen of Fashion
3. Coco Chanel - Chanel and Her World
4. Any travel magazine

Extra Credit:
1. You can view what's going on in Paris with their live webcams on paris-live.com!
2. See Les Miserables if it's being staged near you.
3. Window shop.

DO NOT:
I refuse to watch the Travel Channel shows of places I'm dying to go. It starts to make me angry - why can't I have a job that pays me to travel around? I'm telling you, you start looking at the host/hostess and growl, "What do they have that I don't?" and then get these grandiose ideas about writing to Fodor's or something and they'll hire you right away. Don't do it! Or if you do and are successful, tell me immediately how you did it!!!





Image from http://styleandi.blogspot.com

In the Moment

"Moment of Death" by Robert Capa - photo from BBC article "Genius of Photography"

After writing about Ansel Adams, I felt remiss in not mentioning another of my favorite photographers although he is pretty much in an opposite area of photography from Adams. I hope I am not boring too many people with all this "inspirational" series, but this blog is basically a record for me of what I was thinking about anyway. I actually first stumbled across him doing research for my senior thesis in undergrad and I'm convinced that if I could write a screenplay, his life story would make one of the best Hollywood movies ever.

He name was Andre Friedmann, but the world knew him as Robert Capa. He renamed himself because he felt it would be easier to pronounce and made him sound almost American, which is completely more understandable when you realize he was a nice Jewish kid living in Germany and France during the 1930s. He was one of the first "photo-journalists" (which so many of us derive our style of photography from), meaning he followed the action around and documented it as a journalist covers the news. This meant he spent most of his life following around war - from the Spanish Civil War to World War II to Indochina.

He had a really famous quote: "If your pictures aren't good enough, then you aren't close enough." This is really apparent if you look at his pictures from the D-Day landing - he actually accompanied a group of soliders and swam ashore onto Omaha Beach. (Um, for those of you who don't know what D-Day is - that's when the Allied troops including American troops landed in France and started on the campaign to take back Europe from Nazi Germany - I'm just never surprised by how little history people bother learning!). If you've ever seen the movie Saving Private Ryan and that amazing D-Day sequence, you can't help but feel like the cinematographer was directly influenced by Capa's work. They have that same gritty immediacy the film captures.

Capa had some hugely entertaining escapades. When reading about his life, you feel like he knew that following all these wars around meant he had to absolutely cram in the actual living part. He wasn't one to say no to a drink or a party; in fact, he co-founded the famous Magnum Photo Agency, named after the champagne bottle.

Although I'm not advocating crawling around and chasing wars (although one of my favorite writers, the journalist Sebastian Junger and the photographerthat frequently accompanies him, Tim Hetherington - a modern-day Hemingway of sorts with a twist of Capa - does just this and has written amazing stories accompanied by fantastic photographs from war-torn Somalia and Afghanistan) - Capa's commitment to his subject is truly an inspiration. He inspires all of us photographers to be in the moment, to capture things as they are unfolding and not be afraid to get a little dirty!

Sadly, you can't stay that close to the action forever. Robert Capa died in 1954 after stepping on a landmine in Indochina. Legend states that he died with his camera in his hands.

Upside Down Favorite

Image from NY Times article.

I alluded in an earlier post to how much I love Ansel Adams - what photographer doesn't, really? But the historian in me also loves to read about his life, his style, and some of the stories his friends and family tell about him. I think this kind of social and biographical history is incredibly interesting and also influences how I look at his images.

There are numerous books and a wealth of articles on Adams on the web - one of my favorites is this New York Times travel article. The article details how, as a young man, Adams took his first trip to Yosemite and stood on a rock to take a picture of Half Dome, then promptly stumbled and fell! On his way down, he accidentally pressed the shuttle-release, creating an "upside down" image that remained one of his favorites.

I have heard stories about how he would hike for miles into Yosemite, spend an hour or two setting up a shot, and then take just one picture and hike back out, so confident in the pre-digital era that he had captured the image as it was in his mind. I'm not sure if this story is true - it may be more of a tall tale. But I did read that one of his first famous pictures from Yosemite, titled "Monolith" and taken of Half Dome, was taken as he neared the apex of his hike. At this point, he only had two plates left and so could only capture two images and he nailed it on the second one. Perhaps this is where the other story I heard comes from.

Ansel Adams inspires me for two main reasons, besides the sheer beauty of his images: one, he was able to pre-visualize his photographs. Again, without the immediate feedback of a digital camera LCD screen, he had to frame, adjust, and shoot all the while knowing what it would look like in his head. As a recent convert from film, I still see the beauty in black and white film photography, which I did for so long, because it takes dedication and helps build your intuition as a photorapher.

Second, he knew his equipment instinctively. He used one of the tiniest aperture openings available to create the best depth of field for his landscape work and experimented with filters, including a red filter to create his dramatic "Monolith" photograph. In fact, he founded a club for like-minded photographers called F/64, named after a tiny aperture opening. I can't imagine lugging around all that heavy equipment - I mean, I complain about having to carry two or three lenses and a flash!

If you haven't had a chance to really peruse some of his work, I encourage you to browse through a book or take the opportunity to go to a museum that has some of his prints - you will be amazed!