a Photo Blog, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to dear dirty New York
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.
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.
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.
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.
More spaces and places. See last post for definitions of places, spaces and heterotopia. Click any image to see them all enlarged.
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.
Click any image to see an enlarged gallery.
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.
Went out to Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, last weekend. They’ve turned several massive old industrial buildings into a massive, hipster (with kids) retail complex. We were intending to follow a self-guided walking tour which included artists’ studios on upper floors – they were all closed. So there was lots of Covid-style eating establishments and trendy retail, Halloween decorations, period architecture, public art (to come in future posts, but nothing especially galvanizing).
