Gare du Nord at the Institut Néerlandais

Starting today, the Dutch Institute in Paris shows Gare du Nord, an exhibition that retraces Paris from the 1920s to the 1960s as portrayed by photographers from the Netherlands. Sensitively curated, this is a very exciting show, well worth the visit for anyone with a love for photography, Dutch art and culture, or Paris. And why, indeed, should one not love all three!

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Paris: Portrait of a City by Jean-Claude Gautrand

The spectacular breadth and quality of the iconography spawned by Paris is, alone, a demonstration of the importance of this city in human culture.

Taschen has published an imposing photographic portrait of Paris, bolstered by an excellent text. It is a volume indispensable to anyone who wants a definitive – or as definitive as one can be in the limited space of 572 pages – iconographic recounting of the last 150 years in the life of Paris. Continue reading Paris: Portrait of a City by Jean-Claude Gautrand

Contributions by Alain Bublex

Alain Bublex explains that his contemporary art piece, Contributions, has its source in the urban planning work of Le Grand Paris. He says that looking at the output of the international consultation for Le Grand Paris made him realize that he didn’t actually know Paris, that many of the places mentioned by the architects and planners were known to him – as they are to many people who would say they know Paris, I might add – only in name.

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Marville at the National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. has announced an exhibition on nineteenth century photographer Charles Marville to run from October 1st, 2012 to January 6th, 2013. There is an article in Art Daily giving some details of the interesting new discoveries by the researchers working on this exhibition. While we wait, we can always look at the wonderful historical pictures of Paris that the NGA has posted on its web site.