Tag: stairs

Stairs

Cardiff, Wales

Having started curating the hundreds of liminal spaces I’ve photographed for the project Neither Here nor There, I can’t help noticing these null zones everywhere I go. The first two pictures are of he same staircase and bridge, the third is a spot nearer to our hotel. Looks like AI is even getting in on bridges now (see below).

Cardiff, Wales

Tower Steps

La Tour, Arles, France

In the last post on La Tour I had been trying to see Joel Coen introduce his curation of Lee Friedlander’s photographs but the crowds were too big and I was turned away. I returned the next day to see the show without Joel and capture some more of the stark geometry of the place.

Love is Blind?

Cloître Saint-Trophime, Arles, France

After seeing the powerful Mary Ellen Mark retrospective and Reflection: Japanese Photographers Facing the Cataclysm at the Espace van Gogh, I moved on to see some lenticular images by Mustapha Azerroual and Marjolaine Levy at the Cloître Saint-Trophime and, as is my wont, I photographed the space rather than the exhibit (see below).

La Petite Ceinture

La Petite Ceinture, Paris

We also walked the length of La Petite Ceinture, a disused ancient railway line that has been transformed into a park. I had been hoping that it would be a little like the High Line in NY, affording me elevated views of the surrounding area but it was really the opposite, sunken and surrounded by tall trees, dark and lovely. Click any of the pictures below to enlarge them all.

Erwitt

Musée Maillol, Paris

We went on from the Musée d’Orsay for a coffee and then the Musée Maillol which had a very comprehensive and nicely curated (and lighted!) retrospective of Elliot Erwitt, integrated loosely with some of the Maillol work. I’m not sure if it was an homage to Erwitt, but the path of the exhibition was directed with dog-paw prints throughout. The museum was not too crowded and everyone seemed to speak French, which was a relief. The audio guides were in French only, another positive, un-touristy sign. Click on the images below to see them enlarged.

Musée d’Orsay

When we finally emerged from the Musée d’Orsay, the crowd waiting to get in had swelled. And there was a queue snaking its way down the stairs and out to the street below. As much as I enjoyed it, it was a relief to leave the crowds of tourists behind.

Turner Contemporary

Billed as the largest art space outside London, The Turner Contemporary (named for JMW Turner, the English landscape painter) was somewhat disappointing from the point of view of how much art there was to see. Here I’ve shown images that are mostly more about the space and the light than the exhibits. Click any image to see them all enlarged.

Margate: Places, Spaces, Heterotopia I

We arrived in Margate the first week of April, well out of the season so it was really empty, especially in the morning.

In my course we studied the difference between images and pictures, things and objects, spaces and places; where the first item in each pair merely is, whereas the latter has some human significance or meaning.

A heterotopia, again according to Wikipedia, is a concept elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow ‘other’: disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming. Heterotopias are worlds within worlds, mirroring and yet upsetting what is outside. In my limited experience of reading about heterotopia, the term is extremely elastic, not to say nebulous, in the way it’s thrown about in art criticism.

Click any image to see them all full-sized.

Flying by the Opera House

Sydney, Australia

The Opera House really is lovely and I took lots of pictures of it from many angles and in many lights. Looking back at these 5 MP jpeg images now, shot on my Dimage A-1, I’m forced to admit that most of them are not that good: noisy, ill-framed, poorly exposed.