Vernissage

A private viewing in France is known as a "vernissage", historically when the artist laid the final coat of varnish (vernis) to their work to render brighter or duller according to the light in the salon where the work was being shown.

I needed no varnish - the photos sighed languidly in the breeze from the open window self-assured in their composition. 

The film crew arrived early, as planned, and shot Sherry arriving at the apartment as I welcomed her in and explained what vernissage meant. The camera then followed us as I gave her a private viewing and artist's explanation of the photos. Aaaaah. I bathed in the "it is all about me" for a good half and hour and loved every moment.

And then the remainder of the guests arrived, stopping under the windows in the street to hear the buzz of the event above their heads, keen to tell me that they wanted to see more photos (they do not know how long it took me to hang these ones, and I did not tell them). Some interesting conversations ensued and I have leads for future projects. 

The highlight was when Sherry came up to me to ask if she could buy a print, and it was all recorded on film. If they use this part of the footage then so will I. In addition to this sale I managed a further two sales. In retrospect I was trying to do too much, I was trying to do it all and it would have been better to enlist some help. It was a learning experience. I learned.

The second highlight was at the end, when all the invitees had departed Jennifer, Laura and Kylie stayed behind to make sure I came down gently, and they helped tidy everything away. That is friendship. 

A taxi? At lunch time?

After filming we tried to find taxis. I located a taxi rank, full of taxis... all without drivers. When I enquired in a local shop if the drivers would return I was told "yes" but "after lunch".

It was 3.30pm.

So Sherry and I posed for a photo as Tom searched for a taxi with a driver. I handed my camera over to Peter, her boyfriend (a genuinely lovely guy), to take the shot. Very sweetly Sherry insisted that he take one of the two of us with her camera as well. I get the feeling that hers will be the better picture.

Being filmed

Thursday morning was beautiful - white linen trousers weather. Phew. I arrived early to scout out a couple of initial good locations for Kate-type photography, this generally involves sitting down in the middle of the road. Pissing off motorists and motorcycle riders on narrow Parisian "ruelles" is an occupational hazard. 

The film crew mustered outside Métro Abbesses. And the Parisians moved just gently to one side; their respect for cinema outweighing their intolerance of inconvenience.

The first photo opportunity involved sitting down in the middle of the street, and Sherry was wearing a cotton-jersey summer dress. She is a pro... she coped. Our rapport and mutual respect grew as the day went on. Another phew.

As the filming continued I forgot we were even being filmed and recorded, every step of the way. Occasionally Tom would call us back because one or other of us had said something really excellent that would drive the story along. This involved doing re-takes. At the 6th retake of one particular scene I no longer knew what I had said in the first place. Sherry acknowledged that she generally could recall anything for up to 24 hours and then it was lost to her. She is a pro.

Three hours later we were all in yet another secret garden in Paris. The film crew had collapsed onto the edge of the band stand. The bottled water was finished and I had a vernissage to set up. Sherry and I parted (on camera) after 5 takes in which I invited her to my vernissage that evening...

Hang those photos

After morning session four classmates bought our lunch from the opulent Bon Marché and nibbled on sushi and salads in a secret garden under a rose-covered arbor.

My mission for the afternoon was more practical; to locate transparent bra straps. With the mission completed (at Darjeeling) I spent the afternoon sitting in Vicky's sun-filled apartment writing a new version of my Memoir from our time in Boston. I was astounded by the amount of detail that worked its way through my keyboard to sit on the screen in front of me. As if daring me to leave it out.

I underestimated exactly how long it would take to hang just 18 prints for my show. With only permission to hang from the balcony of the mezzanine I ran up and down stairs way more than the minimum 36 times getting the length of each piece of fishing line just right before curling circular paper clips over the prints and suspending them from the fishing wire. Do you think I have a photo of it? Of course not.

Lois (whose apartment I borrowed for the show) invited me to dine with her and a friend at 10pm. We sat at a circular table, candles flickering gently with the vast windows thrown open to welcome in the sun's warmth being emitted on slow release from the beige sandstone. 

In preparation for the big day I turned my light out before midnight, but only just.

Mon conseileur d'image

In the first half of Tuesday I suffered a bruised ego. My writing (or rather note taking from the journal entries) from 2001 was heavily criticised as lacking both context and characterisation. Maybe I have taken on too much...

In preparation for Thursday I joined John Baxter's Walking Tour which was being filmed with Sherry as part of the group. Tom carried an enormous camera on one shoulder and saw the afternoon through one eye set flush against an eye piece. He tripped over a lot of obstacles. It was cold. The film crew were tired and even a glass of wine while sitting on John's wonderful balcony overlooking Notre Dame, the Sacre Coeur and St Sulpice did not appear to inject them with new enthusiasm.

I collected what I thought I was going to wear for Thursday and took it Margaretha. She poured us a glass of champagne each and then wrote a list; event description, clothes, weather, accessories, makeup, jewellery, shoes... 

By 9pm we were through. Clothes - white linen trousers, grey top, beige cashmere cardi. Make up - none (an error I think in retrospect). Bag - none. Jewellery - Kate everyday jewellery inspired by a Spanish sculptor. M, S and I went to Le Petit Pontoise for dinner.

Viaduc des Arts

Many photos are best taken from an angle that is difficult to get to. Bridges are perfect for observing life passing on the street below.

Sheila, my reviewer and fellow-photographer, met at the Gare de Lyon to climb up onto an old viaduct which has been transformed into 2km of sequential gardens and walkways, covered with arbors of roses and filled with narrow rectangular ponds reminiscent of the Taj Mahal.

Photography is usually a solitary activity. It was good to walk, talk and observe together. It is time to start training my eye for filming on Thursday. 

Le chien qui fume

"The smoking dog" would be a great opening to a chapter of a book. All this week I have morning classes in how to write Creative Non-Fiction. I chose this class with the intention of eventually doing something with all the journals Mick and I wrote in the USA. We are 5 in the class; Charles (host of last night's soirée and retired business man who has set up a Salon des hommes in Paris), Susan (an Australian business journalist), Jane (a Tanzanian/British professor of English at the University of Barbados), Min (a scientific writer based in Paris and Switzerland) and me (a photographer and graphic designer). 

Lessons learned today from Kevin Jackson, our teacher, are: identify your audience, how to capture your audience, thinking about structure and the importance of planning and how to test your prose through reading it aloud.

You can see why we (the 4 females) deserved lunch. In the restaurant we met Geoff (pictured), a travel writer based in Barcelona and all decided to attend his talk later in the afternoon.

Geoff told of the importance of reading around the subject you are writing about. Non-fiction writing involves extensive reading before you start.

Lights. Camera. Action.

On Sunday evening Charles and Clydette de Groot invited PWW faculty and staff to a soirée at their apartment on the Champs de Mars. A charm-filled apartment with unimpeded views of the Eiffel tower. To match the location I slipped into my dark blue cocktail dress and silver sandals and swept my hair up high.

Tom had his camera rolling as the guests walked through the door. I took a gift for Clydette - one of my photographs - and presented it to her on entering. She was thrilled and showed the photograph to the rolling camera as a close-up. I made sure to invite her and Charles to my vernissage.

It was a delightful event - a chance to drink nothing but champagne and eat wonderful food (filo-wrapped asparagus with sweet chilli dip, satay sticks with finely chopped chives, mozarella ball, basil and tomato kebabs, enormous prawns with alioli). I listened, I talked, I charmed. I elicited some new guests for the vernissage.

Clydette and I shared our lists of the good and bad books written about Paris. I discussed moose with my professor for the coming week (Kevin Jackson) who will be teaching a group of us how to produce Creative Non-Fiction. I listened with attentive ears when Charlotte Puckette mentioned her need for a photographer for her forthcoming cookery book - The Ethnic London Cookbook. I talked to Siobahn about the difficulties of initiating cultural change in an organisation. It was both fun and stimulating - a fabulous evening.

Outside in the street I slipped off my silver sandals, delved into my bag for a pair of flat ballereins and happily rode a solitary metro home.

Reading in the afternoon

On Sunday morning I ran one of the beautiful Paris circuits that we developed when we lived here - it involved going under the Eiffel tower, along the Seine, through the Tuileries and then I got delightfully lost in the streets of the 7e and 6e until I eventually found myself back on Boulevard du Montparnasse and therefore "home". Vicky and Pascal leave tomorrow for Ile de Ré so I spent some quality time with them and then headed out - still ravenous - for registration at Forum 104 which are the rented premises for the Paris Writers Workshop this coming week. I totally acknowledge that without PWW I would not be here now.

John Baxter, Sherry Stringfield and Patrick McGilligan read excerpts from various pieces of literature on Sunday afternoon to welcome the attendees for the subsequent week of the Paris Writers Workshop. As I entered the garden at Forum 104 I saw Tom and Coco both filming the reading, both trying hard to ignore the miniature waterfall making more noise than you would ever think possible behind them. 

My job was to meet and greet. I added in a personal "promote" to go with the postcard in each individual pack. I need an audience next Thursday and this was one of my opportunities to "woo". I wooed as many people as I could.

Movie Dinner

After several e-mail exchanges (mutually complimentary) and a couple of phone calls (about timing) Tom Rudolph and I eventually met in the lobby of his very bijou hotel on rue de l'Université in the 6e. He wore the big smile of an adopted Parisian returning home.

His first words were to admire my dress (see previous blog posting - phew) and to describe a small restaurant down the street that he is particularly fond of. We ordered aperitifs followed by dinner and wine and swapped tales from childhood to Paris and back again seamlessly for several hours. 

He asked me what I found so inspirational about Paris. I looked up the height of the building dwarfing the street in shadow as the evening sun fell below the roof line and pointed out the golden glow in two window panels and the last vestiges of sun on two bars of a three-barred balcony. Tom did not follow my line of sight but was looking at me. "You should see your face right now," he said. "You are in love."

Practical movie conversation was limited to the sound equipment (lost by Air France between LA and CDG). They mis-labelled it "Transit". Interesting movie conversation was about how he knows Sherry Stringfield (she is his next door neighbour in LA). 

Back at his hotel I met Sherry and her boyfriend and Coco (the other videographer). I will see them around over the next couple of days but our time together is Thursday, filming Paris through my eyes. Sherry and I will have microphones on and I will take her on a tour of the 18e, cameras in hands, walking, talking and photographing. The crew, and Sherry will then come to the vernissage and film there too. Tom promised not to break any plates.

La vie quotidienne

Everyday life is the subject matter for my photos. Where the ordinary meets with the unexpected to produce humour, beauty, irony... Pictured left is Victor, Vicky and Pascal's eldest son (who speaks with my accent in English better than I do).

I went shopping with Vicky. Ordinary, everyday grocery shopping for her. Vernissage shopping for me. And then I realised I did not have any bags to carry the 6 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of water (I am guessing what people will be drinking!!!) and foil piles of yet more salty snacks that I had just purchased. "Pas de problème", said Vicky. "Tu prends le chariot!" And so for four blocks I pushed the shopping cart along the sloping sidewalks, in the rain, partially covered by a small black umbrella.

Ile St Louis is a special place and is home to a gallerist - Jaqueline Lemoine. I called in on the off-chance she might be willing to display a poster for me. The question formed and reformed in my mind; I asked if she could offer suggestions as to where I might display posters to encourage a decent audience to attend. She shook her head gently and remarked I should try the local cafés and restaurants in the Montparnasse area. The message was clear - "not here honey". I kept my posters rolled and hidden in my bag and headed out of the gallery for a mouth-cleansing ice-cream (rose-flavoured raspberry) followed by a visit to friends on Boulevard St Germain.

I arrived some time around 3pm as Margaretha was cooking blinis and smoked salmon for brunch. Preparing to leave to meet Tom (the director) for dinner Margaretha asked what I was going to wear. I looked myself up and down - summer skirt, light weight grey top, summer ankle boots - and replied "ce que je porte maintenant". Cries of outrage ensued. I was to call Tom, invent an excuse for being late, go back home, change into high heels and get it right. With honorary Parisienne status I must not let the side down! I acquiesced. In the RER my excuse arrived serendipitously - a fault on the line meant the trains were not running. I phoned Tom to discover he had got embroiled in other activities and would love to delay our dinner date for half an hour. I ran home, changed into a dress and high heels and flew up to rue de l'Université to meet the man who has paid me the biggest compliment in choosing to feature my photographs in his film.

Previous films made here include...

Saturday I had a meeting with Lois Grjebine, the owner of this marvelous apartment (pictured left) who has kindly offered to host my photo exhibition entitled "The Other Side of Paris". She is a woman of character and a social calendar to rival the busiest in town. The apartment is enormous with the most amazing triple height window in the sitting room. Original artworks hang on the walls interspersed with African masks. More artwork rests on random easels.

I had the vague thought that it might be fun for Lois to have a film crew in her apartment, then she told me how a great French film of 1981 by Claude Pinoteau "La boum" was filmed here featuring the novice Sophie Marceau! The film crew broke plates (which they then replaced), scuffed the floor and generally made a mess. Lois fiercely expressed her concern over the crew arriving on Thursday. I made suitable mollifying noises.

We discussed how I will hang the images and I explained my ingenious plan to which she nodded her acceptance. She asked to see some of the photographs that I had brought with me to this meeting and scrutinized them and nodded her approval. Then she told me she was the Chief Photo Editor for a newspaper and had met one of my heros - Robert Doisneau.

I feel smaller, but in very good company.

Blue Eiffel tower from Passy metro

Really too gorgeous - I ran through la tour Eiffel today - there are a bundle of blue lights piled in a heap underneath it.

A Night in Gormenghast

Friday evening found Sebastian and I back at NYU Paris in Passy - a village I am becoming very fond of. Caroline, the director of this part of NYU, had arranged for a glass of kir for attendees and PWW (through Kate) provided small salty snacks! A fed and watered audience are always more receptive! 

Sebastian's talk led us through his father's work as an illustrator. In the UK Mervyn Peake is known as the author of Mr Pye and the Gormenghast/Titus trilogy but his first love was illustration and one of his first commissions was for pen and ink drawings for RL Stevenson's "Treasure Island". Sebastian explained how his father had him stand on the kitchen table in their unheated house in Sark for hours on end as he modelled for the character of Jim! I was hooked into the tale of a father who not only drew his kids but drew for them. We saw sketches of pirates and heard about an igloo that Mervyn made for the kids when a deep snow fell on Sark. 

The most powerful illustrations to me were the Glass Blowers (now on show in the Manchester Art Gallery) who were blowing glass cathode ray tubes for the bomber planes in WW2 unbeknown to Mervyn as he sketched them at their trade. As an illustrator foremost, Mervyn sketched his was through the Gormenghast books, his manuscripts were full of drawings and Sebastian says his father saw the scenes in his visual imagination before describing them in prose.

I collected my first autograph of this event as Sebastian kindly signed a poster I designed for the event and dedicated it to "My great friend and colleague Kate". I was truly touched. We had a farewell dinner and parted company - each their metro station and their route to the next adventure.

A Literary Walking Tour

John Baxter is described by his French in-laws as a "bon raconteur" and it is this attribute that ensured he was accepted into the family. He now lives in the 6e arrondissement in a building whose staircases and bannisters have been touched by the shoes and fingertips of writers such as Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. I visited John in May when he suggested I might like to be more involved with this year's workshop than simply as their web designer and attendee. I love him for the suggestion!

John conducts walking tours of the city, especially the area around Montparnasse where he explains why artists and writers were drawn to this particular part of the city in the 1920s, how the writers lived, how café culture grew as a result of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann's sweeping changes to the city, where the most exquisitely overlooked Art Deco buildings can be found and how the philosophers, artists, actors, writers, and their muses lived and partied. 

He shepherded a group of us along rue Vaugirard, boulevard du Montparnasse, rue Delambre, Square Delambre and the Montparnasse cemetery for 2 hours and on Tuesday next week he will do the same thing in the film that Tom is making.

Location Scouting

Someone is watching you! Along rue Ruisseau towards Lamarck Caulincourt a piece of art casts a glance over the passers-by. And I cast a lens over the art and the passers-by. Both the artist and I are happy. And the passers-by... they are generally oblivious.

I am walking through the 18th in my role as location scout. Tom has sent through the filming schedule, Thursday is dedicated to Kate!!!! He will be shooting Sherry and I wherever I lead her in the quest for images of "The Other Side of Paris". My route needs to be fresh. I think I have found it. I stopped myself taking photos. 

But I need to run. I am late for John Baxter's Literary Walking Tour of Paris. I run to a walk...

The Secret Garden

Tom, the film director, passed me an article from the New York Times about the hidden gardens of Paris. One, in particular, caught my eye - a narrow neighborhood garden along the side of a disused railway track where graffiti artists have decorated the walls. 

The catch - you cannot get in unless accompanied by a "member". To contact a member required e-mail and phone calls. But Friday morning I secured entry to this magic place.

The garden is in the very north of the 18th arrondissement near to the Porte de Clignancourt. I descended the metal staircase to find a narrow strip of land, terraced into tiny morsels of earth, planted with wild flowers. Rose-covered arches mark the length of the terrain and at strategic points there are long tables with chairs piled on top. This is a garden where social events take place, a garden where the relatively poor neighborhood can meet in a green space, a garden where the children can witness changing seasons through what grows.

Further along the railway line I met Mary, a New Yorker, tending her tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and recently planted vines. Denis Loubaton, president of the Association of the Jardins du Ruisseau took me on a tour of the upper terrace and invited me back in September for a festival when the association will inaugurate a water collection system using old wine barrels to collect and store the rainwater that tumbles from the derelict railway station.

I have some new photos.

A shared plate of cheese...

Ashlee is one of my best "I don't need to see you for a long time because we just pick up where we left off last time" friends. Last time I saw her was in a small café in Montmartre after 5 months of living in different countries. This time we met on Thursday night for a hasty supper of bread, cheese and wine in a small wine store tucked away in the back streets behind the Sacré Coeur to discuss the importance of creating good karma and Ashlee's imminent (next day) permanent move to the south of France. Jack, an incredibly gorgeous, tall, dark and far too young Australian, joined us for half an hour, nibbled on some chilli-coated cheese and described how he woke up this morning in a 4-star hotel complete with fluffy dressing gowns and a beautiful girl in his arms. Ashlee and I just sighed.

Jack had offered to drive Ashlee to Nice (I suspect so that he could lie on the beach and top up his tan) in an upgraded white van with a creatively splintered wing mirror. The van still need to be packed. It was getting dark. What else do you do in the tiny lanes of Montmartre on a Thursday night than stagger along the sidewalk carrying the contents of a friend's apartment and her collection of 50 pairs of designer shoes all in their original boxes?

The Village of Passy

Passy is a village within the city boundaries of Paris. Just two generations ago it was a hill surrounded by crop-filled fields. Now it is firmly part of the bourgeois 16e (the 16th arrondissement) with designer boutiques and an Inno as well as a regular Monoprix. Sebastian and I met at the metro station to pay a visit to New York University where his lecture will take place tomorrow. We entered into the leafy courtyard and were welcomed with a glass of champagne. It would be impolite to refuse...

An hour later we had mastered the technologies required, had sat in the Philip Starck chairs in the Director's office and exchanged compliments... and I passed out another invitation to TOSOP for next Thursday. Sebastian went in one direction to meet a contact from the Sorbonne as I headed to Montmartre to meet Ashlee who is moving to Nice tomorrow. The 4th of July is going to be a big day for a lot of people!

View from my Room

The unrelenting beauty of the roof tops.

Publicity and Opportunity

Without publicity, there is no audience, without an audience an exhibition stands little chance of success. I also need to remember that I am promoting Sebastian's talk on July 4th. The Paris Writers Workshop classes for this week are being held at WICE on 20 bvd Montparnasse. I walk up there armed with posters for both of our events and with postcards for mine.

As soon as I arrived I saw the image on the ground - it was too beautiful and required some exploring. It is part of an old boiler that was being dismantled. This section is only a tiny part of it - the whole boiler is almost a living entity. I just loved the shape. I was invited to the cellar to see the dying machine and got some great photos.

Inside WICE I put up multiple posters and also inserted a postcard invitation to TOSOP inside every welcome pack for next week's attendees. I am back there tomorrow morning to take photographs of people for next year's publicity for the event. 

Sebastian

"Why are you doing this?" Sebastian asked me as we walked and I pointed out the insect-like art deco balconies above the normal line of vision.

"Because it feels right", I answered. "I think that something will happen as a result of these 12 days in Paris. I don't yet know what, but I trust myself and my instincts and my instincts tell me to be here."

Sebastian is my charge for the next couple of days. His father was Mervyn Peake (author of Titus Groan and Gormenghast) and Sebastian has been telling the story of his father's illustration work to audience's since 1983. We work out our 3 steps remove from each other is very simple and we share the location of Pooh Bridge in a small village in Sussex called Hartfield.

Later in the evening he tells me the tale of how, as a result of successfully imitating a Guernsey accent and selling a sizeable quantity of wine to a a client who previously refused to buy from him Sebastian won a) a trip on Concorde (which he gave to his wife), b) a chunk of cash and c) a race horse (which he sold). People who I know who have won a race horse as a sales prize I can count on the fingers of one hand. This is why I am doing this...

Returning via the same path we stopped to watch the Eiffel tower sparkle - it has changed colour. The lights were silver, the sky pewter, the tower steel. A moment etched in memory - two near strangers watching the most romantic sparkle in the world in the distance between the apartment buildings of Auteuil. I have a new friend.

I cross Baudelaire's Pont de Mirabeau and looked over once more at the tower, now lit from within by Yves Klein blue. For a static form it is very adaptable. Paris' canvas.

Back at Vicky's I climb the ladder into bed and delve into The Great Gatsby. I need to read each sentence at least three times; for meaning, for sub text and finally to appreciate the beauty and economy of each of Fitzgerald's chosen words.

rue Denovez, 20e

© Kate McLean, 2007

All photos are best seen in reality. Come to Paris on Thursday July 10th to the vernissage.

How it all began...

In 2007 I walked and photographed the lesser-known streets and avenues of Paris in search of beauty in the everyday. Each Thursday morning I emerged from a different metro station in the 10th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements to take photos of a city as it appeared to me. Behind every image is a story of something that did happen or something about to happen. Some of the stories exist, people in the street related their tales to me. Some of the stories are imaginary...

Some very good friends helped me select which of the 3000 photos I should use for a 33 image solo exhibition in Liverpool in May 2008. The reviews were excellent!

Now the photos have returned for the first time to Paris - where they truly belong.

I am staying in Montparnasse with a lovely friend, Vicky, and her family. Her mother's amazing double height, wood panelled, light-ridden apartment is host to my exhibition in a week's time. From now until then I am involved with the Paris Writers Workshop - looking after guest speakers, developing publicity materials, welcoming new registrants and attending a couple of classes.

In addition both my photos and I are to appear in a film by Thomas Rudolph, featuring Sherry Stringfield (from ER) which starts shooting on Sunday this week. This is fun!!!