Imagine Paris subdued and submerged, the city reflected on itself in the wake of a natural disaster. This beautiful and unsettling short film, which we spotted over at Design You Trust, shows the City of Light — from the Louvre to the Centre Pompidou to the average narrow street corner – flooded and abandoned as the streetlights continue to flash unheeded and café awnings ripple in the breeze. The film, entitled “5:46 am” and created by Olivier Campagne & Vivien Balzi, is deftly done and strangely calming, though the world it imagines is one of a disaster we’d not like to see. Click through to see the short film and a few stills and let us know what you think in the comments.
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to stroll through the cobblestone streets of Paris in the 1960s, Charles W. Cushman’s collection of vintage photographs will transport you to that era. How to Be a Retronaut unearthed the images, which honor the City of Lights with candid shots whose vivid hues remind us of classic French films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Gorgeous buildings and mid-century automobiles fill the pictures, while fashionable passersby don suits and tea-length dresses, oblivious to the lens that was immortalizing them. Step into a time warp as you flip through the photo gallery after the jump.
Where does one live if one is interested in the life of the mind? Do you hole up in a rural area or head to the city, where you can hope to meet like-minded aesthetes at gin-filled parties? If you prefer the latter, then we have a list of cities for your wandering, writerly craft to thrive. We’ve included a few writers famous for living in the cities below, as well as recommended reading for each place. As always, let us know what places or which authors we’ve missed in the comments section below.
All across Paris, the common man is rising up in battle. Or, more specifically, the common bored office worker is spending his time creating intricate Post-it note collages on his office windows, in a city-wide contest between corporate offices known as La guerre des Post-it (the Post-it wars). As My Modern Met pointed out, there’s even a Tumblr dedicated to the war, filled with creative, clever and silly Post-it murals guaranteed to brighten your day. What do you say we bring this trend to the US? We know the Flavorpill office has some big windows that could do with a little decorating… just kidding, Flavorpill bosses, back to work! Click through to see some of the best bombs in the French Post-it wars, and let us know what you think in the comments.
Ross Ching’s newly refurbished ‘Running on Empty’ video, a time-lapse fabrication of an LA with no cars, has gotten a lot of hype in the past few days in conjunction with the whole ’Carmageddon’ fiasco in LA. Even though Carmageddon turned out to be a dud, Ching’s video is a beautiful ode to Los Angeles, worth watching no matter where you live. To our minds, the time-lapse video is something akin to watching a city fly by in a cab — it can feel removed and relaxing, touching and surprising, and is a pretty, easy way to experience something huge. To that end, ‘Running on Empty’ inspired us to gather a collection of other lovely time-lapse-based odes to the world’s most fascinating cities, from Berlin to Seoul to Abu Dhabi to New York. Sit back, relax and immerse yourself in somewhere else.
Olivier Magny’s book, Stuff Parisians Like, is out today. He’s the creator of the blog with the same name, which you can find here, and he’s also a serious sommelier — so much so that he started a Parisian wine-tasting school called O Chateau when he was in his early 20s. As a native Parisian he has a lot to say about its residents, and much of it is tongue-in-cheek. Early on in the book, he writes, “Paris has become a tepid city full of tepid people.” (It’s probably good to insert a lengthy sigh here.) However, these “tepid people” are also incredibly judgmental and easy to poke fun at, which is why the book can play off the success of sites like Stuff White People Like and get away with it. At the end of every section, Magny includes useful tips that will make you appear to be oh-so Parisian. So read on, dear readers, and tell us what else you love to hate about France.
If checking out Woody Allen’s latest flick left you yearning to take a trip to Paris so that you could wander its streets like Owen Wilson, this stunning series by Montreal-based photographer Marco Gervasio might be the next best thing (it’s definitely more affordable). “My last trip to Paris was about rediscovering the city’s artistic and architectural beauty,” he writes. “With my brand new high resolution digital camera and lenses, I wanted to focus on the details… From parks to churches, galleries to building ornaments, those human (and animal) heads were watching.” Lose yourself in images of the hundreds of sculptural faces that he captured after the jump.
When French photographer Edouardo Mortec decided to do a series on the crowded streets of Paris, he knew that a multiple exposure technique was the best way to approach such an unwieldy subject. “Initially there was something disturbing looking at the crowd, it was echoing something dark and fuzzy,” he told My Modern Met. “I realized those masses of people could represent, in a manner, the multiple energy trapped in me and, at the same time, I could see myself in each individual lost in his mind and the flow of the urban life.” The resulting images present an abstract swirl of people inhabiting a city that’s still remarkably easy for the viewer to recognize. Click through to check out some of the highlights.
He was Williamsburg’s original hipster. The first in what would become a teaming succession of visualists hellbent on squashing the status quo. In his day though, he had in his corner a certain Alfred Stieglitz, as well as Marcel Duchamp, who both saw in him something more than the average image-maker. Armed with letters of introduction, he crossed the pond to Paris, where the Surrealists welcomed him as one of their own, and where the likes of Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Joan Miró, and Gertrude Stein all sat before his lens. He was Man Ray (originally Emmanuel Radnitzky), the American who did much to brighten The City of Light. In the collection entitled Man Ray in Paris, Erin C.Garcia gives us 99 reasons to herald the master. Click through to see what we mean.
Early night photos of Hungary, dark Parisian streets of ’20s, queer night clubs and Moulin Rouge in the ’30s and a few very late evening encounters in the early ’50s — the technical innovations that allowed nighttime photography exposed these worlds and the “shifting social and artistic conventions” that play out after sunset. New York’s Bruce Silverstein Gallery has assembled a captivating set of nightlife photography’s early pioneers Brassaï, Ilse Bing, Robert Doisneau and André Kertész for their Nightexhibit. Visit sexy-sans-soft-box-flash mystery gals and stroll down moonlight cobblestone with our (mostly safe for work!) picks from the show.
