March 2017 – Parisian Clichés

It’s really annoying to come from far away to visit Paris and to be disappointed by a building under construction for one month, one year or more and specially when you are a photographer.

What are the monuments or buildings actually under construction in Paris ?

When you travel your first goal is to come back in your country with a photography of the building you want to visit or just shoot from outside.

This list is made for photographers who want to be sure not loosing time in traffic jam, metro or cab.

Frustration is really high when your expectation to get ‘’The’’ picture is destroyed by a palisade, adds ….

For Parisian Clichés Rework doesn’t mean that the building is completly closed but impossible to shoot for a nice photography of the building.

You will find some practical comments for each monument or building.

The following comment ‘’Completly closed outside’’ means impossible to shoot for a good photography.

Monument or building completly closed outside and inside

Hotel de la Marine :
The facade of the is building is underconstruction and some rooms inside will be renovated too.

The shoping center, la Samaritaine :
The building is totally closed until 2018.

Théatre Marigny :
The Theatre is completly closed until 2018 inside and outside for renovation.

Monument or building completly closed outside but open for visit

Eglise Saint-Augustin :
The church is opened but the building from outside is under construction until 2021.

Eglise de la Trinité :
The reworks are partially finished and it’s now possible to shoot a nice picture of the church but be carefull, there is still some rework in the garden in front of the church.

Eglise Saint Germain :
The rework from the underground will take place until 2020, if there are no surprises during the archeologic work around the building.

Palais de la découverte :
The dome is underconsctrution until oct 2017 but visits are possible.
The building will be totally closed in 2020 for a long period for underconstruction.

Palais Bourbon (Parlement) :
Some reworks outside the building.

Monument or building partially closed outside but open for visit

Tour Eiffel :
For security access the Eiffel Tower is under construction around the tower and the gardens are not free of access and the best spot to shoot the tower is from Trocadero.

Place Vendome :
All reworks on Place Vendome are finished but Boucheron’s Building has started for renovation in Decembre 2017 until 6 months and to take picture of full place is quite difficult.

Arc de Triomphe :
The back side of Arc de Triomphe is under construction.

Institut de France :
The complete right part of the building is under construction but the main dome and the left part of the Institut is fully visible.

Hippodrome de Longchamp :
Horse races are totally impossible during the rework of the buildings and most of them are dispactched to hippodrome Auteuil and Chantilly.
Solidays Festival will take place end of june on the middle of the hippodrome like every year and there is no problem to participate to the music festival the most important event in summer.

Eglise de la Madeleine :
Some reworks makes difficult to get an overview of the church for a complete picture of the building, but a picture can be done partially of the facade and the corners.
We still can get into the church without any problem.

Cascade Buttes Chaumont :
The cascade can be seen but no water is going out during some time. Should open very soon. This is a famoiu splace where Marcel Prosut used to come here with some parisian girls.

Musée Cluny : Hudge reworks on the buildings, Chapelle and the garden and it’s really difficult to get a nice picture from outside even from roman therms.

Institut de France : The right part of the building is under construction.

Monument or building completly closed for visit but photography possible outside

Musée Carnavalet :
The museum is totally closed but the building from outside is visible and pictures can be taken without any problem.

Musée de la marine : Let’s check but the museum will be totally closed after summer during 3 years for renovation. Taking pictures from outside of the building will be possible but not for a long time.

Recent openings

Hotel Crillon :
The Hotel has opened beginning of July 2017.

Fountains of Place de la Concorde :
the 2 fountains of the place have been totally cleaned end of may 2017.

Panthéon in Saint-Michel is now completly renovated and open to visits.

Saint-Eustache Church now opened with a new refresh.

Elysée Montmartre in Pigalle with a new look inside the building is opened for concerts after many years of closing due to a fire.

The power of photographic memory

The writing of In Search of Lost Time is based on an essay, Jean Santeuil, which will serve as a genesis, a synopsis for the writing of In Search of Lost Time. This essay marks the beginning of a meticulous artistic approach initiated by Marcel Proust for the writing of his final novel using his photographic memory.

This artistic process that will last more than fifteen years until his death. He had no choice to avoid putting his death on the scene, the last episode of this masterful process of creation.

To portray an aristocratic society to which he does not belong wholly but which he can approach and co-operate on a daily basis with such a clear vision of his morals and beliefs is pure pleasure for a reader in search of adventures and stories to be imagined frozen by a camera.

Without the persevering determination of Marcel Proust to create a masterful literary work, to built this work as an exceptional artistic creation, reading In Search of Lost Time would be an unbearable novel to read for a neophyte photographer in literature and would have no Influence on our vision to see the world by narrative composed of a simple accumulation of photographic memories that would not suffice to keep his reader in suspense.

In the same time photographer will place his tripod, his lenses with different opening, angle, speed and paper, to revel the final result of his process confirming his role of photographer of informing, representing, and surprising.

Marcel Proust, used maybe a photographic memory filed in mind he could pick up as a reminder, as records during his writing process.

The revelation of the involuntary memory

The book written by Jean -François Chevrier ” Proust et la photographie ” proposes an analogy between the involuntary memory that would be at the origin of the vocation of Marcel Proust for the writing of The Search for lost time and the unconscious mechanisms at work in photography.

Here are some extracts from the book of Monsieur Jean-François Chevrier:

“I imagined a fiction: The search for lost time tells a vocation of photographer as much as a vocation of writer.

It is the gradual discovery of the powers of photography as a work of memory.

Watching, recording, writing, reproducing, imitating, revealing, imagining are for me the seven keys to the photographic imagination.

For the needs of the book, of a circular construction, Proust frequently reverses the terms, anticipates.
His narrative assumes from the beginning the possession of the final truth.

A collection of memories, like an album of photographs, can’t make a novel.

In order to construct the Research, it was necessary to establish a firmer point of support: the revelation of the involuntary memory. As early as 1909, Proust had shut himself up in his work, in the almost empty architecture of his novel, which he would never cease to fill until his death.

I see in this company a model for photographers, because perfectly romantic.

But I must observe that the practice of photography today demands from the photographer a singular awareness of his ends and his means.

It has always seemed very significant to me that the last fragment of Jean Santeuil, which prefigures the famous episode of the Research or where by a characteristic effect of the involuntary memory, the hearing of a sonata de Vinteuil re-emerges in the spirit of Swann the distant period of his first relations with Odette de Crécy, that this last fragment ends with this sentence:

“And the photograph of all this had taken its place in the archives of his memory, archives so vast that, for the most part, he would never look at them, unless by chance they were reopened, as had been this The pianist’s hangover that night. ”

“The photograph of all this” is the complete recording of the past in memory, restored by chance, when one might think it lost.

As for the formula “the archives of memory,” Proust owes it to Baudelaire.

Proust brings an additional element of analysis by introducing the temporal or event dimension. The apparatus is no longer a reproduction tool but a recording tool.

Cf: Proust and Photography – by Jean-François Chevrier

Month: March 2017

Monuments under construction in Paris