Lèche-vitrines*

“I suddenly found myself on the front line as missiles sailed over my head towards a phalanx of CRS riot police. With their kevlar exoskeletons they looked like killer robots from the future.”

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A Fix of France

I was lucky enough to do a house-swap with an artist friend in Paris for a couple of weeks, giving me a much needed fix of France - got to see friends, some great art and just enjoy being in the greatest city in the world. I also got down to Arles to see the Rencontres photography Festival, always worth the trip.

Rue De Buci

Dominique cuts loose in the Café des 2 Moulins, Montmartre (the Amelie bar)

Culture Night 2022

Two of my five photographs that will be exhibited on September 23rd as part of the Íova Group Culture Night exhibition in Studio Ex, 72 Francis Street, D.8. This year the theme is Countercultures, with a focus on subcultures and the experiences of minorities. #CultureNight2022

Asleep 4, Paris

Asleep 3, Paris

LOUISAHHH!!!

These are my portraits of LOUISAHHH!!!, the queen of French industrial techno. She's just announced her first album, The Practice of Freedom, which is available to pre-order here:

Cecilia Danell

Painter Cecilia Danell, photographed at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Congratulations to Cecilia Danell, who has been awarded the ESB Keating Award and Silver Medal for an Outstanding Art Work at this year’s RHA Annual exhibition. She’s also shortlisted for the RCSI Art Award, which will be announced in December. This image is an out-take from a portrait I was commissioned to make by the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, which will be part of a semi-permanent exhibition of 18 portraits of artists-in-residence there from later this month. I’m really looking forward to seeing them up on the walls.

CECILIA DANELL - IN THE BIRCH PLANTATION. Oil and acrylics on canvas, 95 x 130 cm

CECILIA DANELL - IN THE BIRCH PLANTATION. Oil and acrylics on canvas, 95 x 130 cm

You can see more of my portraits of artists in this gallery .

Marina De Van

Marina de Van is a very interesting French film director, screenwriter, novelist and actor.  She was a great subject to shoot, making it a challenge to pick just one image - I did eventually, and it’s in the “Artists” gallery.

Her new site has just been launched, and offers acting coaching and hypnosis in Paris.

Sunday in Montmartre

Part of the really interesting / disturbing Roger Ballen expo in Halle Saint-Pierre

L'esprit de l'escalier

L'esprit de l'escalier is a French expression that no French person seems to have heard of, which describes what it’s like to think of a perfect response long after the opportunity to deliver it has passed.

I was leaving La Guarida in Havana when I noticed him coming down the staircase, and when I asked for a photograph he knew just the right pose.

There are some more of my Havana photographs here.

Taken on my first visit to the MEP, in the company of my favourite exhibitions coordinator.

The staircase in my last apartment. Monter ces escaliers aide à garder le cul soigné, as they say.

Etymology

Borrowed from French esprit de l’escalier (literally “mind of the staircase”), with the definite article le (“the”) at the beginning of the term elided to l’. It refers to a description of the phenomenon in the essay Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paradox of the Actor, completed 1778 and published 1830)[1] by the French encyclopedist and philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784). During a dinner at the home of the statesman Jacques Necker (1732–1804), Diderot was left speechless by a remark made to him. He wrote: « l’homme sensible, comme moi, tout entier à ce qu’on lui objecte, perd la tête et ne se retrouve qu’au bas de l’escalier » (“a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument levelled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again at the bottom of the stairs”), that is, when one is already on the way out of the house.

The Staircase (Mystery)

Paris Street Art, Part Two