Photo by lilypenelope

I kept walking as the night followed me like it was my own shadow. I stopped, admiring the beauty of history reflected on the dark water. Then I saw it, the sign. Pont Neuf was right in front of me. My memory flew back in time. When I fell in love. I started dreaming, imagining, improvising new thoughts. That's when a strange sound hit me. Was somebody following me? Or was it simply the sound of the night with is dark presence, kidnapping my soul? Photo by lilypenelope

Inside the Versailles Palace. Beautifully adorned. Maybe too much. Thinking about the inner reality. Keeping in mind the outer one. Rich vs poor. Kingdoms vs. humanity. Details. Beautiful colors, incredible works of art. Yet keeping in mind what happend outside this realm. Photos by lilypenelope

"The Subversion of Images" as the title of the exhibition I saw at the Centre Pompidou. In this photo just a subversion of an image! Image depicting a fragment of the Centre Pompidou! Photo by lilypenelope

The city at night. Colors. Silence. Movements. My head is turning. Left. Right. What am I looking for? A thought that left my head without leaving a note? A dream that flew away through the city's floating soul? Photo by lilypenelope

City are such complexes artifacts. We know most of their [hi]-stories. We know most of their anecdotes. I love, when in a city, to explore its deepest meaning[s], it's multiple faces, facades, smells, sounds, and any other detail that, ultimately, creates my comprehension of it. There is nothing though, in my opinion, more fascinating than roofs. As I always say, rooftops are the city new beginning. A new groundfloor. A new history.
Looking at these two particular pictures I took from the top of the Centre Pompidou the word "uncanny" comes to my mind. It's true, each neighborhoods, each streets, each building, has a precise history, in time, in politics, in society. But what about the single inner stories? What about the inner daily chapters of these buildings? What is the [hi]-story line in their vertical presence within the urban context?
I love just to stare at these constructions and make up stories. Uncanny stories. About the people who live in there. About the people who, once they step out in the "outer" world, they step out from the city inner litterary composition. Photos by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Always fascinating a city from above. What lays there at the horizon? Dreams? A new city? A new interpretation of it? Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

In the streets of Paris, on the walls of the urban gallery, even the smallest detail becomes art. Photo by lilypenelope

Architecture. Old and new. The first reflected on the 2nd. Distortion. New perception. New reading. New architecture? The architecture of reflection. Ours?
Photo by lilypenelope

Colors. Water. A garden. In the middle of the city. You can watch but you can't touch!
Photo by lilypenelope

Somewhere in Saint Germain des Prés. Dreaming of Paris! Photo by lilypenelope

Does it ever happen to you to wake up in the morning and start your day drinking a coffee (and sometimes smoking a cigarette!) thinking about philosophical strange things? Well, to me it happens all the time! I was reading an article about those architectural works, made only for temporary things that ultimately for some reason or another just remain in our reality for good. Structures built for the Olympic games that, most of the time get destroyed after the games are over but sometimes authorities decide to keep them for social, cultural, or whatever other reasons. Sometimes these pieces become part of the urban realms they belong to perfectly fitting in, sometimes they just dont as they become what we say in italian a "hole in the water": too expensive, unfunctional and so on. Obviously the best example of all is the Eiffel Tower in Paris (not in Vegas!!!). Built for the International Exhibition of Paris of 1889 it was ultimately decided to keep it eventhough it was supposed to stand there for a maximum of 20 years and then be dismantled. Today it is one of the most well known landmark in the world. It stands there, in the Champs de Mars, as the most impressive Parisian icon. Its vertical presence becomes very strong not only visually but also in its meaning. It is a very powerful work of engineering, mediatic presence since it appeared in numerous movies, quoted in many songs, pictured in thousands of postcards, shot in million of pictures, and yes, it is today a money machine!
But then, when walking there, below it, around it simply adiring it from different angles it made me see the concept of temporality in a different way. You see this vertical imposing structure , maybe while sitting on a bench of the Camps, you shoot some pictures and you realize that at the end, immortal or not, it feel like a natural presence. Like a tree. What is at the end the difference between the tower and a tree? They're both directed towards the sky. Photosynthesis in one, throuhg which nature lives and survives through light, lights, flashes in the other process through which its symbolic nature survives. If in a tree the main vertical (liquid) movement is what brings life to its components, in the tower people are are vertically elevated to the top bringing life to the structure. They both live from bottom up. Are they both immortal. Some trees are supposed to be, for the tower...who knows...surely its iconographic image will be printed in our collective memory forever. But we are unfortunaly not yet immortal!

Strange day today. Or should I say strange week, strange month or strange life??? I was reading posts this morning around the blog's world and I've realized that many people are indeed wondering about the same things I find myself thinking about this morning: life! I was saving my pictures into Flickr when I came across some of those I shot in Paris last december. I was experimenting with my camera and see how the world came out if I shot it out of focus. Maybe that would be how I would see it without my glasses? That would be too much!!! But looking back at those pictures made me start daydreaming. I wish I wasn't in this town of mine right now. I wish I was somewhere else, anywhere, maybe alone, maybe with my closest friends maybe who knows. Looking at the world out of focus makes you see the unseen, allows you to complete parts of reality that usually impacts you in different ways. Out of focus makes you dream, makes you see different shapes or even wonder what if the world I see would sometimes be out of focus and I am the only one who can chose what to leave it that way or what detail should I see clearly? I wish my morning would be out of focus but...unfortunately it seems that life is one of those few things you can't photoshop!

REALITY

WHAT IF...WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY SEE?

In two hour my city will completely change! Carnival officially starts tonight! I will get ready in a moment. Dressed like an evil pirate I will go out and dance all over the place. With me thousands of other people with funny costumes. Bands playing the typical carnival music. Music, fun and as usual, way too much alcohol! The party for this first night will officially end at 4AM in the morning...at 8 I have to be at work! Every other night until next wednesday is free night which means partying non stop all night long! Imagine your city in a sublime mix of colors sourrounded by very loud music for an entire week!!! Awesome!! I will post something tomorrow (if I can make it !!!) I am still not sure if I'll bring my little camera tonight...last year I got robbed! Have a wonderful night you all!!!

I was reading an article on the life of George Simenon the other day. This year is the 20th anniversary of his death. In his life he wrote more than 200 novels 75 of which have the great Commissaire Jules Maigret. I read many of them and still have many to read in my chaotic bookshelves. There is no mystery that I love mysteries and thriller stories. The funny thing though, about Simenon, is that his novels are never too old! Lately I found a book that I bought in LA from another author I love, Raymond Chandler. Unfortunately reading it now, reading about LA wasn't easy. Many buildings, stores, places no longer exist. With your memory you can try to depict this lost heritage of the city but it is harder to keep track of its ongoing path through the everyday. When you read Crais, Woods or Connelly (just to mention some) you are almost there with the characters, you walk on their streets (and I know them), you eat in the same restaurants you maybe went couple of years ago. Yet, talking about history, memory and heritage Los Angeles isn't really a good example since everything is somehow defined in a book called "The history of forgetting" (by my SCI-Arc professor Norman Klein).
With Simenon it's a different thing. Eventhough written between the 30's and the 70's Paris remains the same. Architecture, streets and even some stores! It is easy to be part of a city that, although many years have passed, it gives you the same feelings of the past. The city though it's always depicted as cold, rainy with the windows covered by thin condensation. All of which created a familiar dimension with the reader, maybe his main characteristic of a city filled with mysteries! As historians said, maybe it is because the bad weather is always associated with a refuge, a heater, a pipe that both Simenon and Maigret loved to smoke. The rain and all the shadows of grey become too the main characters of the story. As I always visit Paris when there is the sun it is strange yet fascinating feeling it with rain and fog and yes... murders! I thought that maybe the weather has changed through the years. But maybe not. Is it possible that the dark side of Simenon's novels were dictated by some darkness in his life? Probably. Ultimately you never stop discovering people. As they are like paintings. You see what's presented to you but often not behind. Maybe Paris was really foggy and humid. Or maybe that's how personal feelings were translated.