Category: France

Versailles Xpro- Summer of 2005

I’ve recently scanned around 60 old rolls of film, which I’ll gradu­ally post. These are some photos of the palace of Versailles taken on some extremely expired slide film. At the time I worked in a photo lab, and ended up with a huge bag of all the expired film from the shop for about £20, and also got free devel­op­ment as a perk. Half-melted and degraded Kodak slide film + Olym­pus XA2 camera, cross-processed as C41.

Le Haut Boulay /​ Fomapan 400 review

Some photos of a place called Le Haut Boulay in North­ern France near where my mum lives. I have never seen a soul in the hamlet. There’s a hand­ful of houses and the road­side shrine, and that’s it.

It was really a test roll for the film. Fomapan 400- a very cheap black and white film from the Czech Repub­lic.

Bienv­en­ue à Lassay-les-Châteaux

My moth­er lives in a small town in North­ern France called Lassay-les-Châteaux. For a few years she’s had a holi­day cara­van in a park nearby, and at Christ­mas she bought a house in the town. The English version of wiki­pe­dia has prac­tic­ally noth­ing to say about Lassay-les-Châteaux other than show­ing photos of two of the three local castles- one in the town centre, the other two just outside. (The town’s name also sounds like it means “leave the castles” in French). The French entry doesn’t tell you much more, except that a lot of people were guil­lotined there in the Revolu­tion, the local mayor doesn’t belong to a polit­ic­al party (after a long line of right-wing­ers), and that Victor Hugo visited once. It’s just not a place where things happen. If you want the quiet life, you can find it in Lassay.

Mont St Michel

I went to Mont St Michel last week for the first time in years. It’s a medi­ev­al abbey on an island on the border between Normandy and Brit­tany, about an hour’s drive from my mum’s house in France. We went there a few times when I was a kid, and the last time I was there was in the late 90s on a school trip. It has dramat­ic­ally changed since then.

There was some­thing a bit seedy and cynic­al about the place in the 90s despite the spec­tac­u­lar town itself. Buses and cars drove over the cause­way to the island, and parked in a decrep­it carpark on the shore, which had a tend­ency to flood. As you made your way up through the snak­ing medi­ev­al street to the abbey at the top of the peak, there were endless shops selling cheap replica hunt­ing knives, saucy post­cards and boxes of fire­crack­ers. It must have been a night­mare for teach­ers super­vising school groups.

En train de flân­er. Aucun train-train.

Here’s some more photos from Paris (again taken with a Pentax ME super and expired Pound­land film with a strange red cast), from my gener­al wander­ing around. Wander­ing is one of my favour­ite things to do. In French it’s flân­er, and someone who wanders around a city, observing things and casu­ally explor­ing is a flâneur or a flâneuse, much celeb­rated in liter­at­ure. I did a lot of that on my recent trip, both because I was on such a tight budget, and also because I was on my own, so I was free to spend my time as I liked. I’m in the middle of writ­ing a new zine about the trip. Hope­fully I’ll have it finished by the Shef­field Zine Fest next week­end.

Jardin de Luxem­bourg

Here’s some more film photos from the Jardin de Luxem­bourg in Paris. (Luxem­bourg is one of those words I always have to look up the spelling of, other­wise I’m temp­ted to insert all kinds of extra vowels).

Canal St-Martin

Here’s some more pictures of Paris, this time of the Canal Sainte-Martin, once again taken with an old Pentax ME Super from the 70s. The film was expired and from Pound­land, and went through the x-ray machine at the airport, which resul­ted in it having a red cast. I colour correc­ted it out where I could, but the pictures don’t quite reflect the aqua green water as I saw it. I also took some b&w pictures of the same area, which I’ve developed but not yet scanned.

Graveyard/​ghost town double expos­ures

While I was in Paris I visited the famous Père Lachaise cemetery, and took a lot of photos both mono­chrome and colour, which I will post later. One roll, however, turned out to be half-used already and I ended up with double expos­ures. It turned out I’d already taken photos of a place called Domfront in Normandy with it. Domfront is a bit of a ghost town, which made me laugh to get double expos­ures of a liter­al grave­yard over a figur­at­ive one.

Mont­martre Photos

I wandered up from near the Opera (where the hotel was) through back streets up to the top of the hill, where the church is. I think it’s a much better route. You see lots of inter­est­ing tucked-away things, and avoid crowds and having to climb lots of steps.

Profess­or Knatsch­ke

My univer­sity library had a massive stack of print­ing industry annu­als from the 1890s through to the 20s. I always enjoyed look­ing through them because the illus­tra­tions and articles they chose to show­case new print­ing tech­no­lo­gies were often really odd, and were good to photo­copy for collages and zines. Next to them on the shelf was a strange little book called Profess­or Knatsch­ke. It’s a comedy book writ­ten and illus­trated in 1912 by Alsa­tian satir­ist Jean-Jacques Waltz, aka Hansi, about a clue­less German profess­or and his daughter’s trip to Paris, mock­ing both the French and the Germans (but mostly the Germans) in a more inno­cent pre-WW1 pre-Nazi era. I always really liked the illus­tra­tions (and Elsa K’s obses­sion with making gifts embroidered with “inspir­ing” mottoes) , and now it’s avail­able free online as a copy­right-free ebook.

Lassay les Châteaux

Last month I went to visit my mum in France. She lives just outside a small town called Lassay les Châteaux. It does indeed have sever­al ruined castles. It’s on the Pays de la Loire /​ Normandy border, and most of the houses in town are old stone cottages. She considered buying one, but it was too damp. When people are think­ing of France being cosmo­pol­it­an and chic, they are not think­ing of rural Normandy. It’s a lot like Derby­shire, but without the moun­tains. The local cuisine is heavy on tripe, bacon and sour cream, served with teacups full of cider (there are two rival triper­ies in anoth­er nearby town). While I was there, I mostly ate my own weight in brioche and sour cream, and sat in the sun read­ing a book about the post-war polit­ic­al history of Europe. I took quite a lot of photos on film, so I’ll wait until I have those developed before writ­ing more.

Versailles in the summer of 2005

I’ve been sort­ing through my things, and found some old negat­ives. I’ve already scanned the one from Italy in the late 90s, and here’s some more. (There’s a lot more to come). In 2005 I went camp­ing with my mum in Yvelines, just outside Paris. You can get into the city in about 15 mins on the RER, so it’s a good combin­a­tion of camp­ing and sight­see­ing. Versailles is just down the road too. I took a lot of photos there, but I can’t find the others right now. These are taken with an Olym­pus XA2 and some cheap expired Kodak slide film, cross-processed.

Lille 2008

Here’s some photos I took in Lille in 2008 on a day trip. I only just got them developed.