Visitors

As I indicated in my previous post, I have had the pleasure to meet a number of bloggers the last couple of days.

Saturday we met between several French-talking ones and we had a very nice day together.

There have also been some more distant visitors (still around); Drama Diva (di.di/ li.na) and Pijah from Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Last Thursday we went to Versailles together and you can see them above in front of the castle, taking pictures of the gardens. They (and I) took also some pictures of the castle, which please find below. The visits continue. I hope to be able to be back to normal blogging in a day or two.

La Butte aux Cailles (3) - Graffiti

I have already showed the above picture, but I thought it illustrates rather well what I wished to talk about today – graffiti – at La Butte aux Cailles.

You can of course find a lot of graffiti if you walk around Paris, as in most other cities. The graffiti art started to appear more generally in the 80’s in Paris, to start with in a clandestine way. Later in the 80’s it became a bit too much for people in general and for the local authorities, with taggers producing everywhere, and the city took later severe measures to clean – free of charge for the house owners

Some graffiti art is however today tolerated and even appreciated – and is allowed to remain. Some of the graffiti artists have become stars and their works are sold at high prices. We can see a number of examples of their art at La Butte aux Cailles.

What I show you here has actually to its greatest part been sponsored by the city of Paris - as I understand in cooperation with an artists’ association called “Lézarts de la Bièvre” which invites graffiti artists to paint on selected and “allowed” walls.

This is e.g. the case for “Miss.Tic”. She is nowadays working for Louis Vuitton, Kenzo…and has had numerous shows and sales in different galleries and even decorated large walls in Paris. Another example is “Jef Aerosol” with a similar and international career.Frank Duval (“FKDL”) is another one and you can see his ball playing lady on the wall behind the ball playing young girls on my top photo.I could possibly also refer to some previously made posts on graffiti and tagging.

I will now make a break for a few days, probably until Monday. I have the pleasure to meet several bloggers who will be around and I will not have much time to spend with my PC - maybe with the camera. See you again soonest possible!

La Butte aux Cailles (2)

My last real post on my previous blog was about La Butte aux Cailles.

I don’t have very much more to tell about the place; I just want to give you an idea of what you can find. If you stroll around for a while, you will find a number of small idyllic streets, a lot of individual houses or villas with small gardens in front or behind. As an example, if from the central Place Paul-Verlaine you walk down the street “Moulin des Prés” and enter a small side street at no. 72 (Square des Peupliers), you will find several samples of what I have tried to illustrate with the top picture. You can prolong the promenade around the whole area and find a lot of surprises. Even the eating, drinking and shopping part seems still rather genuine. You can find a number of restaurants offering decent meals for between 10 and 13 €, not so easy in Paris any more. This used rather to be what you would call a working class area and it has still a bit of authentic atmosphere, but it’s obvious that this is on its way to change.

You can find some of the photos on my (new) photo-blog.

New site

After a year, I thought it was time to change and create a new blog. As from tomorrow, my posts will be here.

I have changed the format allowing some larger photos. As a starting point I show you the same photo as on my last post on my "PHO" blog.