A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Cities
Well I did look for some of Walter’s arcades (or passages couverts as the French call them), assisted by this excellent guide, but the ones I tracked down were closed. This narrow street (the Cour du Commerce St-André) in St-Germain-des-Prés made up for that. Looks better at night when all the restaurants are open but is more difficult to photograph.
Back home again with enough photos to make postings for a whole year. I’ll restrain myself, however, and for now you can see the result of my quest to capture the perfect Eiffel Tower shot. This involved waiting patiently for other tourists at the Trocadero to move away from the one spot on the balustrade that allows a symmetrical view then setting up the mini tripod. For those who appreciate such details, my small Canon PowerShot was shooting at F8.0 with a 4″ exposure. The big arc lights to the left and right were part of some exposition whose construction was in progress around the fountain.
Le Stryge by Charles Méryon (1853).
“These writings, which deal with the Parisian arcades, were begun under a clear sky of cloudless blue that curved over the arcade; even so they are covered with a dust hundreds of years old by the millions of pages in which the fresh wind of diligence, the heavy breath of the scholar, the storm of young zeal and the slow gentle breeze of curiosity rustled. For the painted summer sky, which looks down from the arcades to the study of the Parisian Bibliothèque Nationale, has spread its dreamy, lightless cover over them.”
Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk.
Off to Paris again for a week to explore some of Walter’s arcades.
Ambergris by Scott Eagle.
Jeff VanderMeer is interviewed by the excellent Bldgblog, discussing “English cathedrals, ‘fungal technologies’ and architectural infections, the Sydney opera house, Vladimir Nabokov, ‘The Library of Babel,’ Monsanto, giant squids and geological deposits, nighttime walks through Prague, and even urban security after the attacks of 9/11”. The interview includes some of my designs for City of Saints and Madmen and provides a great insight into Jeff’s work, avoiding the usual discussions about contemporary fantasy writing for something far more interesting and thought-provoking.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• An announcement redux
Bridge Street, from Prague in Pictures (1940).
A shame there isn’t more of Plicka’s atmospheric photography on the web, his views of Prague present the city the way we usually imagine it from the stories of Kafka and Gustav Meyrinck. This site features a very small selection from the 220 plates that comprise his Prague in Pictures book. Taschen have published a collection of Atget’s famous photographs of Paris; the “Ansel Adams of Czechoslovakia” is overdue for a similar reappraisal.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Giant mantis invades Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Barta’s Golem