Dec 17

Dec 17 Cubism

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Picasso's cubism can be viewed as a reaction to the Impressionists. While they focused on brush strokes, he focused on volume. This photograph was made from the third floor of the Picasso Museum in Paris. The thick and wavy glass, together with all of its imperfections, account for the abstraction. Some of the photographs that I made while visiting the museum are reflections in plexiglass-glass display cases of the views from the windows. The building was just as interesting as the collections and exhibits that it houses.

Dec 16

Dec 16 Monochrome

Jack Siegel

Architecture, Cityscapes, Travel

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The afternoon sun can create such pleasure and simultaneously such danger. Some of my favorite movies are from Jean-Pierre Melville and Jules Daassin--Le Doulos, Le Deuxieme Souffle, Le Flambur, and Riffi.

In actuality, this photograph was made in Frank's Gehry's building for the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Dec 16

Dec 16 Whirlwind

Jack Siegel

Architecture, Cityscapes, Travel

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Friday night one week before Christmas, we walked from the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, down the Av. des Champs-Élysées, through the Christmas Market (before the Berlin truck incident), through the Louvre, down and the Rue de Rivoli, and through the Marais, until we stopped at Benedict for dinner seated at the bar. It seemed like the entire city was out walking, shopping, and eating. Nothing says Paris quite like the Eiffel Tower and the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.

Dec 16

Dec 16 Gehry

Jack Siegel

Cityscapes, Architecture, Travel

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One of the reasons we decided to visit Paris this December was because the Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting an exhibition of a 130 works from the Sergei Shchukin collection that is part of the Hermitage Museum's permanent collection.

Dec 16

Dec 16 Expat

Jack Siegel

Cityscapes, Travel

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it came as no surprise when I stumbled on an empty cafe displaying the album cover for Dexter Gordon's A Swinging' Affair. The album was recorded in 1962 by the late Rudy Van Gelder, but it was released in 1964 when Gordon had taken up residence in Paris as an expat.