Cranes at Clichy-Batignolles

The other morning I walked with Child No. 2 to his school. The sun was just rising and the sky was cloudless. I decided to take a long loop home and walk through the new-ish Clichy Batignolles park, also known as the Martin Luther King park or to our family the Ramp Park with its excellent skate ramps.



Construction is going on all around this park. To the North is the Palais de Justice designed by Renzo Piano as well as the extension of the Metro Line 14.

To the east apartment blocks and to the west more apartment and office blocks. There are cranes everywhere, reaching high up into the sky, red and yellow. 

As ever I was with my camera, not sure what would grab my attention. As it turned out it was a combination of cranes and puddles and ponds.

And now, time to play a little with the mind. The world upside down.

Magical Monday - Lamppost Bonhomme

A face in a place.


Every Monday, Magical Monday, I post a photo that is hopefully puzzling, fantastical, unexpected or just plain daft. Unless otherwise mentioned, no Photoshop involved.

More photos from the Magical Mondays series can be found here.

An Alien Lamppost can be found here.

Reflecting UNESCO

The other day I took my students on an outing to UNESCO to see some of the interesting architecture within the compound. In architectural terms perhaps the most well known building is the Tadao Ando Meditation Space. But there are also examples of Marcel Breuer and Luigi Nervi's architecture. 

I took many photos of course, but some of my favourite ones are taken in the Japanese Garden of Peace, designed by Isamu Noguchi. It was a freezing but beautifully sunny day and the reflections in the water features were beautiful.

More UNESCO photos can be seen on my Flickr account here.

Reflecting the Palais de Tokyo

The Palais de Tokyo is an art gallery in Paris' 16th arrondissement dedicated to modern and contemporary art. It was built in 1937 for the International exhibition dedicated to art and technology. It was conceived as a gallery for the modern-art collections of both the French state and the city of Paris. The monumental stone-clad building is composed of two wings. The Eastern wing is home to the Modern Art Museum of Paris, the western, state-owned wing, has had a more troubled past.

Superceded in its' original purpose by the Centre Pompidou in 1976, it fulfilled a number of roles until, in the early 1990s, the culture ministry decided to install a cinema museum under its roof. €12.2 million were spent gutting the interior only for the project to be dropped following a change of government in 1997. The structurally weakened building envelope/shell stood abandoned until in 1999 the ministry announced it would become home – provisionally – to a ‘centre for contemporary creation’.

I was there last week visiting the Philippe Parreno exhibition, as part of my research for a lesson I planned to give to my students. It was dusk when I came out of the museum. The light and reflections, in the formal pond to the south of the museum were beautiful.

Throw in a few leaves and the reflections look even better.

Then add some flood lighting.

As a final touch add 1 x No. Eiffel Tower.

Hello Paris. You're so beautiful!

Reflecting Art - the Stravinsky Fountain

I was at the Pompidou Centre last week. I approached the museum from the Hotel de Ville passing by the Stravinsky Fountain, a fountain built in 1983 and ornamented with sixteen sculptures by Swiss sculptor Tinguely and his wife French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, (married in 1971).

Tinguely's sculptures are dark grey and move continually, spraying water jets in all directions. In contrast, Niki de Saint Phalle's sculptures are brightly coloured and much less mobile. When I passed the fountain last week the sculptures were perfectly still. It turns out that when the fountains don't run the visual spectacle is still very impressive. The sculptures and their reflections were beautiful, creating an additional work of art on the water's surface.

La Sirène (the mermaid), from behind.

From the front.

This Tinguely's sculpture, Ragtime, and its' reflection made me think of a bicycle doing a wheely.

Le Cœur, heart.


La vie (Life).

Le Chapeau de Clown (the clown's hat).


And finally, a watery tableau.

A lost Hyena

...

What do you think of me?

I have a rough coat like Africa.

I am craft with dark spots.

Like the bush tufted plains of Africa.

...

(Edwin Morgan 1990)

Every Monday, Magical Monday, I post a photo that is hopefully puzzling, fantastical or unexpected.

More photos from the Magical Mondays series can be found here.

Magical Monday - The Museum Monster

Imagine my surprise when I saw this scaly necked Monster on the Esplanade du Louvre.


Every Monday, Magical Monday, I post a photo that is hopefully puzzling, fantastical or unexpected.

More photos from the Magical Mondays series can be found here.

The Magic of Glass

A while back I took this photo through a window in an antiques shop near where we live. I liked the way the photo came out: delicate green, turquoise and silvery colour tones.


Then, the other day I took this photo of a glass chandelier in a stall at the Marché aux Puces at St Ouen. In addition to the silvery green colour tones, there is a touch of mellow aubergine.


I decided to gather together some more images of 'colourless' glass. I love the subtle complexity of reflected and refracted light.




Even road safety cats-eyes look lovely close up.


Glass and reflections.


Glass and refraction.


And glass with the sun setting behind it (Pont Alexandre III).

All good, and strangely soothing.

I wrote another 'Glass' post a while back, it can be found here.

All things grey and wet

I walked up the hill to the Sacré Cœur this morning, in the rain. Why? Well I just felt like it. When I go on walks like this, with a view to taking some photos, I often don't know what I'm looking for when I start out, and then I establish a theme along the way. It rapidly became apparent that today's theme was going to be 'all things grey and wet'. There's no denying that it's easier to take good photos on a clear sunny day. This was going to be challenging. 

As I walked around the back of the Sacré Cœur, the noise of water falling around the base of the church from spouting gargoyles was quite overpowering. Water was gushing out from their mouths, rather like this...

...and this. They suddenly make much more sense when you see them in action, which you rarely do as you  don't tend to look up when it's pouring down with rain.

Grey was easy enough to find.


The sky was grey, with added grey.

I found a few puddles with reflections of the Sacré Cœur. Grey, and wet.



And then, as I approached the Place de Tertre, I spotted a burst of colour against the grey. A penguin having a rest.