Massena Museum

 

Today we went to the Massena Museum.

You know the Massena Museum, don't you?

Exactly, that Massena Museum, the one that is a museum of some rich people's very fancy house down on the ocean next door to the very famous Negresco Hotel. It is partly a museum of the time that was (mid to late 1800's up to the early 1900's) and also it sort of doubles as a museum of the history of the city.

It was fancy! But maybe I am not so interested in telling you all about it. It's more of a "I took a bunch of pictures of it!" kind of place.

When I got home I started doing all sorts of crazy twists on my pictures, because that's sort of my hobby.

What's that?

No. Clerkmanifesto is not my hobby. Clerkmanifesto is the organizing principle of the universe. But I appreciate the question.

Anyway, after making a collection of strange or fun or whatever versions of my pictures of the Massena Museum I realised: "Actually, the regular pictures I took are kind of pretty just all by themselves."

So here are some regular out of the camera box pictures of the Massena Museum. Think of them as the baseline. I'll show you weird versions later. We have all the time in the world.

Don't we have all the time in the world?

Let's pretend we have all the time in the world.

Protecting my images

 

I was out taking pictures of the old city today. And though I share my photographs freely, and with an open heart here on clerkmanifesto, I am, like any artist, terrified that someone may use one of my images without permission or without remunerating me to the tune of 1/1000th of a cent.

What if one of my pictures appears somewhere and no one knows I did it!!!!!

I mean, it could happen.

And though for 14 years now I have daily shared my life's work without anyone in particular passing it around, sharing it, or profiting on it, THE WORLD MAY COME TO ITS SENSES AT ANY MOMENT AND START SHARING AND STEALING MY WORK!

So I have decided to subtly encode my photos with my signature, er, copyright protecting watermark elements.

I hope it does not get in the way of your enjoyment of these lovely scenes from France.

The Market

 

Today we went to the market, one of two local street markets.

This one, The Liberation Market, was the largest street market I have ever seen in my life. A military brass band played Christmas and nostalgic old timey songs while an endless array of vendors sold vegetables and fish along a great square and up and down the tramline street.

What was the occasion for this spectacle?

I dunno. 

It was Thursday. There wasn't any.

It happens every day here except Monday, until about one in the afternoon.

In some ways this market was very different than the ones I've been to, I mean besides the size. It didn't dabble in crafts or prepared foods. There weren't really stalls to get snacks or meals, though the city spilling into the market provided plenty of that. There wasn't even much of any kind of prepared food or products. It was almost entirely vegetables, endless presentations of fruit and vegetable, and a prodigious section for fish.

We're near the sea.

I did not know there were so many edible fish. Faced with the dazzlement I briefly considered taking up a new life's work of learning how to prepare all these fish, and eating them all, and then dispensed of the idea, feeling it too large a task for me and also feeling concerned such a thing could crowd out the cheese eating.

I did my best to get a few pictures in a single minute of photography I had after we sat on a bench and ate some of the best Socca in the city, but the images sort of drifted to the local area.

I felt compelled to make the pictures into classic black and white photography, and since it suited the city so well, I spread it out into some of the other pictures I've taken over the last couple of days.