Blue skies again

After two days of almost continuous rain, rare for here, the observatory not the usual etched white dome:



Blue skies are back:



So one feels like walking - in the old town:









It seems to have been quite an artistic area - once:



Today you can study the new media - and sports journalism has become so absurdly dominant it has its own course:





Monument to Catherine Segurane:



On Rue Segurane:

Letter from Nice

"I've tested Munich, Florence, Genoa—but nothing suits my old head like this Nice [20], minus a couple of months in Sils-Maria [1]. At all events, I am told that the summer here is more refreshing than at any place in the interior of Germany (the evenings with sea breeze, the nights cool). The air is incomparable, the strength it gives one (and also the light that fills the sky) not to be found anywhere else in Europe.

Finally I should mention that one can live here cheaply, very cheaply, and that the place is large enough in scope to permit every degree of concealment to a hermit. The altogether select things of nature, such as the forest paths on the closest hill, or on the St. Jean Peninsula, I have all to myself. Similarly the entire Promenade (about a forty-five minute walk) is splendidly free, inasmuch as people visit for only a few hours during the day. . . .

One is so 'un-German' here: I can't emphasize that strongly enough"—Letter to Heinrich Köselitz, November 24, 1885

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html

"The Good European"

"For even if I should be a bad German," the peripatetic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote to his mother in 1886, "I am at all events a very good European." This heavily illustrated volume marshals considerable evidence to demonstrate just how accurate that statement was: For much of his life, Nietzsche wandered restlessly around Europe, preferring to keep his distance from a Germany he found suffocatingly oppressive and second-rate. But his wanderings were motivated by something more than flight. Philosopher Krell (DePaul Univ.) and photographer Bates argue persuasively that Nietzsche had a strong, persistent appetite for natural and man-made beauty, and that he sought out sites as different as the Alps and the Mediterranean to stimulate his creative powers. Relying heavily on excerpts from Nietzsche's letters, journals, and published works, and on the recollections of friends and colleagues, and on both period and contemporary photographs of everything from Nietzsche's various rooms and homes to street scenes in Nice, Genoa, and Turin (among the many places Nietzsche visited), the authors do make a convincing case for viewing Nietzsche as a true cosmopolitan and as a writer sensitive to a sense of place.

http://www.amazon.fr/Good-European-Nietzsches-Sites-Image/dp/0226452794/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=english-books&qid=1241038446&sr=1-3

By the port:



Back through the old town:

Joyous Jazz, Sezamo, Nice 21-4-09

On the way, in the ecologically responsible tram: "To save the planet - get out of capitalism":



I stopped off at this bar, because I'd read that they had a singer that night. That's her, with cigarette:



This reminds me of Van Gogh on a cafe he painted:

"In my picture of the 'Night Café' I have tried to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house."

Laura with two friends, unfortunately some French pig at the bar decided to have a loud chat on his mobile - I pointed out that there was a singer:



Hoping to become an icon:



On to Sezamo for another good Tues night. This guy is a French version of George Melly - there's a lot of fooling around - but good old trad jazz too:



This guy plays with his whole body, crouching, swaying, stretching up ...:



A guest trumpeter, sometimes a bit of blur conveys the lively atmosphere better:



Frozen in time:



The group's trumpeter:



And so we say goodnight:

Cannes - World Photography Exhibition

Sunday 19th we went to Cannes to see the World Photography show, but first lunch on the beach, with added heater for M:



It was SO peaceful:





"She used to be devoted to ME!":







On to the exhibition -



not without some confusion, it wasn't very clearly signposted, so it was not surprising that it was not crowded. But then the Rotonde exhibition space is so vast, even quite a big show like this was swallowed up with lots of room to spare:



But the French in general take film and photography a little more seriously than most Brits:





Two birds with one shot:





M. was NOT keen on this piece of photo art:



As usual there was a lot of picturesque poverty:



Even the architecture section was won by photos of quaint old buildings - not doubt to the despair of architects:



She tries to understand why these photos won:



The views from the Rotonde were also picturesque, but had nothing to do with poverty:



Somehow I think they're pro photographers:



The lifetime award was deserved:

Born in Lyon, France, Riboud went to high school there and made his first picture in 1937. He was active in the French Resistance from 1943 to 1945, then studied engineering at the Ecole Centrale from1945 to 1948. Until 1951 Riboud worked as an engineer in Lyons factories, then became a freelance photographer and in 1952 moved to Paris to meet Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, the founders of Magnum Photos. His ability to capture fleeting moments in life through powerful compositions was already apparent, and this skill was to serve him well for decades to come.

In 1957 he was one of the first European photographers to go to China, and In 1968, 1972 and 1976, Riboud made several reportages on North Vietnam and later traveled all over the world, but mostly in Asia, Africa, the U.S. and Japan.

Riboud's photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, including Life, Géo, National Geographic, Paris-Match, Stern. He twice won the Overseas Press Club Award, and has had major retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the International Center of Photography, New York.

One of Riboud's best known images is Eiffel Tower Painter, taken in Paris in 1953. It depicts a man painting the famous structure. He is posed as if a dancer, perched between the metal armature of the tower, below which the city of Paris emerges out of the photographic haze.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Riboud

The painter photo was used in the publicity and for the entry tickets, presented like a photographer's ID:

Market in Liberation/Anne Nivat, journalist, at Fnac

Sat. 18th April 2009

To the market in our quartier, which is happily named Liberation - as if living in Rue Diderot wasn't enough:






"Allo M. Photographe!"





Banana republican



"What do you think?" " ... mmmmm"

In the afternoon I went to Fnac to listen to Anne Nivat, journalist, talk about her experience in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq - a brave and dedicated woman:

“I’ve felt fear which has displaced every other feeling, but also solidarity with dozens of strangers with whom I’ve shared unique moments – moments of joy, because I could feel safe for a minute, or because I was warmed by a cup of hot tea. I tried to talk to as many people as possible: with men, women and children whose lives have been destroyed by this war, with rebels who have nothing left to lose, with Russian soldiers or officers who are caught up in this so-called “anti-terror operation” as in a trap.”

...
La guerre qui n'aura pas eu lieu (Fayard 2004) was issued in spring 2004, a collection of further reports from Chechnya. Her most recent book is Lendemains de guerre en Afghanistan et en Irak (Fayard 2004). As in all of Nivat’s books, she draws upon her affinity to the people affected, particularly women, depicts the everyday consequences of geopolitical cataclysm. She herself emphasises that her work is less about analysis than about immersing herself in, and living among, people. Shortly after its appearance in September 2004, this impressive travel reportage won the Prix Erwan Bergot, a journalism prize from the French Ministry of Defence.

http://www.lettre-ulysses-award.org/jury05/bio_nivat.html

New Orleans jazz, Sezamo, Nice 14.4.09