pure and applied

Credit Lyonnais

Credit Lyonnais, originally uploaded by pureandapplied.

While in Paris (in October last year on our honeymoon) we stayed in an apartment in the district known as Opera, which is the home to many of France's financial institutions.

Each night we would sit in the window of our apartment having a wine, watching the street, and observing the workers in the Credit Lyonnais headquarters adjacent have meetings, talk on the phone, file documents, fiddle on their computers.

This fairly plain photo, taken on Friday night, Oct 14 shows one of those workers clearing her desk after being made redundant at the beginning of the financial crisis.

Monet's 'Waterlilies'

Monet's 'Waterlilies', originally uploaded by pureandapplied.

Over a period of 30 years Claude Monet painted more than 250 extraordinarily beautiful images of the waterlilies in his garden pond at Giverny, where he lived until his death in 1927.

This series is known as the Nympheas, and eight of the most impressive are hung in the Musée de l'Orangerie, near the Louvre.

The l'Orangerie, renovated from 1999 to 2006, was originally a barracks, and first became home to the paintings immediately after Monet's death. The eight Nympheas are hung in two long oval rooms designed specifically to show them in the most dramatic way. Sunlight from opaque skylights above illuminates the rooms with their walls painted white and curved so the viewer sees the paintings in their entirety almost equidistantly, to feel immersed in the images.

In each room two wide images and two narrower images face each other. The myriad, varied colours of season, sunset, flowers and pond meld together and many people, like those in this photo, myself included, simply sit and look at the canvases for long, silent periods. The combined effect of the architecture, the diffused natural light, and the vast canvases is quieting, even spiritual (for want of a better word).

Downstairs in the l'Orangerie is another gallery of modernist painters. The likes of Picasso, Modigliani, Cezanne and Matisse are demoted to the basement beneath Monet's more impressive paintings.

Later in our travels, in New York, we saw another of the Nympheas series hung in the MOMA. With all its resources, the MOMA could not match the experience of the paintings to be had in Paris in the l'Orangerie.

I'm writing this post for my friend Katie who, although having lived in Paris for many years, was unable to visit the gallery probably because it was closed for renovation. Katie, I encourage you to go to the l'Orangerie, and I encourage anyone reading this post to do so as well.

Richard Serra's 'Clara Clara'

Richard Serra 'Clara Clara', originally uploaded by pureandapplied.

When it comes to loading photos into Flickr there are quicker flickrers than me out there. It's only now, six months later, that I'm starting to plough through the shots I took while we were on our honeymoon in October last year. And this is one of my favourites. 

Richard Serra is famous for his monumental site-specific installations made in sheet steel. 'Clara Clara', named for his wife, was first erected outside the Louvre in 1983. For six months in 2008 it has been reinstated for a retrospective exhibition of his work. 

The piece is comprised of two 36m long 3.4m high walls of curved steel, bowed together at the centre and slightly tilted toward each other to make a narrow strait in the Tuileries between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde. Serra says of his work "I use steel to organise space". This shot shows how they catch the light, the deep rust colour of the surface, and the way in which people interact with them, touching the face with dusty hands on their way through. 

More on Serra at his gallery and and on the Louvre site.

More shots from our time in Paris.

The Rock Garden, Ryoanji Temple

The Rock Garden, Ryoanji Temple
Originally uploaded by pureandapplied

It's taken a while longer than I thought it would, but I've finally finished uploading images from our Kyoto trip of October last year.

This one is of the famous rock garden at Ryoanji Temple in Kyoto.

The rest of the shots are in my Japan set on flickr.

Tsukiji fish market

  Snap-frozen tuna, Tsukiji 
  Originally uploaded by pureandapplied

Since returning from our 10-day holiday to Japan I've been slowly uploading shots to flickr. It's taken me a few days though to get through the photos from Tsukiji fish market, simply because I took a few hundred of this remarkable fresh food market.

Wikipedia says of Tsukiji:

For many tourists in Tokyo, the Central Wholesale Market, better known as the Tsukiji fish market and said to be one of the best sushi destinations in the world, is synonymous with Tsukiji. It is also the largest fish market in the world handling more than 2000 tons of 450 types of seafood daily.

The market is exciting, industrious and dizzying. Going there was an eye-popping experience that left me wondering just how perilously over-fished the oceans must be.

The fashionable cyclist

  The fashionable cyclist 
  Originally uploaded by pureandapplied

Every now and then on flickr an image gets a lot of visits and you never quite know why.

This is one such image from my travels in Japan with Siobhan. It has easily three times the visits of what I would regard as more interesting shots, but why fight the crowd.

For me the interest in this image is what it says about cycling in Japan. People don't really get dressed up to go out riding, they get dressed up and then ride their bike to wherever it is they've dressed-up for. Just as many westerners would simply drive, many Japanese simply ride.

Dubbo Show afternoon pony ride

Dubbo Show afternoon pony ride
Originally uploaded by pureandapplied

Although I often return to Dubbo, the town where I grew up, it's about 20 years since I went to the Dubbo Show. The show folk, the carnys, are the same, the 15 year olds are the same, though cooler, tougher, more worldly, the rides are the same hydraulic wonders lit-up on custom pantechs, next to a pony ride, or a kids round-a-round. And it was dusty. I loved the light through the dust.