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52 Photographs (2018) #5: Penelope and her Ulysses

52 Photographs (2018) #5: Penelope and her Ulysses

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Now we are into some deep bad weather. Overcast skies, rain. I went to the Musée Bourdelle one rainy Saturday afternoon and thought, well I can photograph inside. I was lucky! I found this photograph. There is a photographic connection in all of this, by the way: Berenice Abbot came to Paris to study sculpture with Bourdelle. But she met Man Ray, and then abandoned Bourdelle. Then she met Atget and abandoned Man Ray!

Penelope and her Ulysses

The Musée Bourdelle is one of the less-well known Parisian museums but it certainly worth a visit. There is a beautiful small garden inside and entry, and one can visit the sculptor’s workshops. Entry is free.

52 Photographs (2018): #4: Paris under water

52 Photographs (2018): #4: Paris under water

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And so the floods arrived. Like a lot of other people I rushed down to the banks of the Seine to take photographs. I didn’t realise there were so many joggers down there on the weekend! I thought it would be full of photographers, but inside I had to constantly dodge left to avoid getting hit by joggers. I had thought that the experience of June 2016 was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Instead, not at all! And the waters had almost risen as much this time as the last time around. Although, of course, not as much as the historic flood at the start of the 20th century.

Here is one photograph of a fellow looking out over the flooded square du Vert-Galant. Jacques de Molay, as you may know, was burned to death in the 1243 only a few short metres from here.

Looking out over the flooded Square du Vert-Galant
52 Photographs (2018): #3, A satellite spotted in ESTEC headquarters, Netherlands

52 Photographs (2018): #3, A satellite spotted in ESTEC headquarters, Netherlands

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Another trip: to Leiden and Noordwijk, the Netherlands. In Noordwijk, a seaside town, there is the headquarters of ESTEC, the European Space Research and Technology Centre. This is the European Space Agency’s technology centre.

In the excellent cafeteria, one can see things like this:

A satellite spotted at ESTEC headquarters
52 Photographs (2018): #1, One of César’s compressed cars, Beaubourg (January 2018)

52 Photographs (2018): #1, One of César’s compressed cars, Beaubourg (January 2018)

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I admit that I quite enjoyed my 52rolls experience in 2016 and I missed taking part in 2017. It’s a good exercise to critically look over one’s photographs each week. However, I thought that maybe writing about a whole roll of film or an experience from a roll of film each week was a bit too much. There is not always such a large number of things going on… But, nevertheless, I am still shooting as much film as ever. So here is my idea: I will select one photograph per week, and write a short text about it. I’m already starting four weeks’ late, which is a good idea: that gives me time to decide what to post and what is interesting or not.

So here is the first photograph. A close-up one of one of César’s series of compressed cars. What was interesting about the show was how he used industrial methods to create works of art, leading the way for many artists after him.

A compressed car

I remember as a child we lived near to a scrap yard and I was fascinated by these machines which could reduce a full-sized family car to a cube a few meters across. Staring at César’s heavy blocks of metal I thought of this and of wondered how much weight the floors at Beaubourg could really hold.

See the other photographs in the series here