just got in to London after an eventful shoot out in the Pyrenees - I was out on
bareback assignment - screwed up my bags and didn't bring any Fuji Acros or
Ilford Pan F+! )*@£@!!!
The weather was mediterranean and storms didn't brew as I had hoped
sadly. The shoot was not the most inspired. I just couldn't use the 6x9 to
compose effectively at all and returned to shooting square. Unfortunately most of
the film I needed was not there...anyhow,
had a great time teaching a few photographers (med. fmt this time) and working
for John at
the photographic printers - shot some in the abandoned Catalan villages and
churches. Some
glorious scenes, hard to do justice though. Food was fantastic there too - mostly
village restaurants, tucked away in the
hidden mountains of the French Catalan province. The other photographers didn't
speak French so I did most of the communication
which was great.
I returned to Paris and spent the weekend there, rediscovering life where I used
to live in Montmartre. Went to Polish Mass at Magdaleine were I was before and
spent the night street
walking - taking photographs. Probably not inspired. I had never thought to do
much other than 35mm in all the time I've been in France and decided to shoot on
6x6 instead.
The young people on the streets take very easily and chatted and talked to me,
even at odd hours into the night. The groups of kids were funny - they often
posed like they were
straight out of drama school acting funny in front of the camera, although I
resisted and didn't take any at
night. You would've loved it, being into social photography and all. I was
approached several times by kids - some whom were
into prostitution, others who were just so lonely wanting a cigarette as a
starting point to talk to someone -
for God's sake - anyone - and others who were curious about a photographer. I got the
bizarre: "do you speak English" in pidgeon English, to which I would respond in
French: "can't you speak in your native tongue?" That often startled guys,
looking to take advantage of what they thought was
a foreigner. Going up to the Sacre Coeur, I was accosted by 3 black men who
asked me in
English and then in French after realising I was fluent, where I came from and
who I was. I stood there and they weren't
letting me through. After a momentuous silence, I told them that I was catholic.
The black man wasn't ready
for that answer and went "Ohhhh. Ahhhhh.." To which I replied, God bless and
have a good day as I made my way to the Sacre Coeur. It was a funny moment.
The night before, I was not as fortunate. I was at the Left Bank photographing
aimlessly without any inspiration, trying to work the city until I could see the
sense in the beautiful place I left back in the last century (I ceased returning
to Paris around 1999. The city had taken on a turn for the worse and had become
an ashtray which was unbearable to live in). A group of youths stood in front of
me at the Notre Dame, and did a comical impression of Lee Evans - it was
hilarious, but I managed to talk my way out of that one.
Unfortunately the trains had all stopped hours ago and at 3am Idecided to take a
cab back to the hotel after the night buses were completely trapped in gridlocked
traffic. Paris has a life that London doesn't even at 3am - it was quite
amazing. The whole city seemed to be controlled by Algerian run cafes and youths
running around. No police, no adults barely - mostly groups of young disaffected
people. Add to that, a large contingent of north African males, and that's a
recipe for social disaster. No wonder 10,000 cars were torched in suburbs. The
French adults might look good and smell good in their superficial trappings, but
the real test of a culture's virtue is how it brings up its children. That night
I saw more disaffected youths - in groups or single, walking and loafing around
the streets of Paris. I was followed by a young kid who wanted cigarettes. She
was clearly trying her luck at prostitution and didn't know how to react when I
told her that I couldn't give her a cigarette because I didn't smoke,
deliberately missing the social cue that she was trying to pass by. A guy did
the same cigarette line later at the Gare de l'Est - not happy to take a no for
an answer, he followed me and asked where I was going. He didn't know what a
tripod was and asked - I told him it was a triple iron for attacking people. He
smiled and said that he wouldn't mess with a karate expert and parted company 😉
Walking all the way back to the hotel, there were gangs of youths everywhere -
goths playing cassettes (yes! cassettes - playing the cassette with the rewind
button on to make that screeching noise that you can't get with other media. And
I thought
vinyl was retro!).
Groups of 5 to 7 rollerbladers at 3 am - nothing weird about that until you see
that they are all about 12-15 years old - their parents probably think they're in
bed fast asleep. And then also the obligatory weirdo standing at the street
corner repeating
the same purposeless hand movements. Then others - like the man outside Gare du
North - urinating
foul stench speaking incomprehensibly in French (more to do with being mentally
ill by the look of him).
I was harrassed by organised gangs of Eastern European women trying to ask if I
spoke English doing the
distraction technique. They didn't try when I held my tripod up to block them
from getting anywhere near a metre of me. All that and I got back to Jaures
(pronounced Shor-Res) within 200 metres of my hotel at 4am. There was a black
man on the desolate street and he saw me coming. He asked for money and I
stupidly refused. I know better than to say "no" when I'm alone in a street with
a man who's been hanging
around waitin', but I was so exhausted that night from walking continuously for
10 hours and starving after a hopeless meal
of snails, cardboard chips and sour red wine in a dodgy restaurant. As I walked
past him, he started walking towards me and before I knew it, I felt his hands
squeezing against my throat. It was a shock - the sudden feeling of thick hands
strangling my throat with his face and breathe
suddenly so close to me was so shocking. My tripod head went straight into his
groin as the legs swung him metres away from
me and we ended up standing apart several metres as I unscrewed the spikes from
the end of the tripod legs absolutely furious that he'd invaded my space. He was
swearing like f**k at me telling me that he
was going to turn me into ****ing fricass'e (translates well even with poor
French). Then he called for his friends who
suddenly appeared from the other side of the street. I pulled the tripod legs and
shed the spikes and he backed off away from
me dramatically cursing at me and holding his groin. The whole street was empty
and I quickly turned heel and walked
calmly away. I was about 30 metres from himbefore his friends joined him and I
could hear him telling his mates that I had socked
him in his testicles with a weapon. They didn't come after me as I turned the
corner of
the street and then buzzed the hotel door frantically to get in. The night
concierge wasn't happy about me arriving back in at 4am, and I had to apologise
profusely before getting into the hotel. Found out that I had dislocated a leg
of my tripod after fending him off from trying to strangle me. I doubt he was
coherent - he had a kind of African flamboyant movement about him, possibly of
being influenced by alcohol. I was pretty angry afterwards that I let him get
away so easily. His friends were quite bulky and he was only a few inches taller
than me - doubt they could catch me. Catching up with the photographers back in
England, they were a bit horrified that this could
happen (but not surprised). I'm still feeling furious that I didn't make sure he
couldn't do it to someone else although on balance,
had I stayed to pummel him (he was bigger than me, but still a coward) things
might have turned out worse with his friends coming to
his help.
In any case, that was Paris. I had a great time there and finished up by
taking the train back to Waterloo. Train all the way to the Pyrenees from
London! It was gruelling travelling for hours at a time on train. Paris isn't
the beautiful and friendly city I once knew - filthy and filled with
disaffection, the young people there bothered me less than the adults. I recall
too how in Palalda, a medieval town, an arrogant builder refused to move his car
after completely blocking a single file road so that no one could get past him.
He literally gave me the bird when I asked if he could move his car. He refused
and even when one of the locals asked him, he refused. So I ended up reversing a
Renault Laguna down a medieval town, nearly destroying it in the process. The
hill-starts were dangerous, but I managed it and it wasn't as nerve-wrecking. Or
in Villefranche where the local restauranteurs had empty restaurants, but
insisted that for non-Catalan people, it was full, despite the absence of guests
from 95% of its tables! But those experiences were exceptional for its lack of
human consideration. I had to find LeGrandFormat shop in Chemin Vert where I
managed to get loads of Fuji Acros and Neopan; in LeMoyenFormat shop, the sales
guy had a large afro and was rude as hell. I left within 1 minute of being
treated contemptuously by him. But that is unusual - most of the people I met in
Paris were friendly.
