If you end up reading this, I have somehow overcome my deep embarrassment at being moved to write it. This Saturday morning I slipped into the Musee d’Orsay fairly early and thus didn’t wait very long in line to have my bag checked. This is not the embarrassing part. Usually when I go to the […]
Two of my favorite hangouts in Paris are the Pompidou Centre and the Rodin Museum. I will write about other favorite hangouts, but I want to tout these first, along with recent photo exhibits in each one. An annual membership for one person at the Pompidou costs all of 49 euros currently. That is a […]
Visiting the Mali Twist exhibit at the Fondation Cartier creates a sort of counterpoint to my experience of the Irving Penn show at the Grand Palais. Another photographer who often posed his subject against a blank studio backdrop, Malick Sidibé (1935-2016) was one of the greatest photographers of the west African nation of Mali — oh, wait, […]
I finally went to see the Irving Penn exhibit at the Grand Palais (Paris), two weeks before it is to close. I’d been looking forward to it ever since I saw the marquee-sized posters around the city back in September. Perhaps I felt a bit intimidated about writing about a blockbuster show honoring a blockbuster […]
There are always LOTS of Americans in Paris, so that’s a silly title, but I couldn’t help myself. Most of the photography action here this week — this month, really — is in the 6e arrondissement and over in the Grand Palais in the 8e. But I was strolling past the Pantheon last week and […]
For four days (November 9-12, this year) the Grand Palais is filled with photographs. I knew it would be overwhelming, because — Grand Palais. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I set out for my first visit ever to this orgy of world photography. First, the organization of the exhibit is by […]
In this Parisian week of celebrating some of the best photographers in the world, it is something of a relief to laugh along with the Musee d’Orsay curators at the shocks and disappointments that awaited the earliest photographers, and still haunt us today. OK, so how many times have you taken a wonderful landscape or […]
It is rather hilarious to hang a feminist, women-only art show at a state institution that strikes coins. And that is not the only funny thing about this fabulous show, which will run through the end of January (2018). The show is also heartbreaking, and I have to admit that within about five minutes I […]
The Carmignac Photojournalism Award is now in its eighth year. It may be one of the least well known, and certainly one of the most productively lucrative, of awards designed to encourage courageous and in-depth journalism, in this case focusing on “an area of the world at the centre of geostrategic conflicts, where human rights […]
Florence Biennale XI (2017) Across the street from my Florence hotel there is a vast complex, the Fortezza de Basso, behind high yellow-brown brick walls. It is a space large enough for an expansive exhibition of juried contemporary art submitted by artists from around the world. This year the variety of artists and media is […]
The historian's lens 