Primaries

 

Oh, no, you read my title? Not political primaries. My sense of doom is too great for that. For a few moments let us retreat from the end of the world and the incipient doom of Nationalism and Capitalism. Let us sip the rarified air of pure color.

Primaries.

Actually, I am most often using five colors in these pictures, but I think you'll take my point.

Yesterday I showed and talked about the contemporary museum featuring a vast architecturally centered work all in green light. But there was another museum we went to that was built into an old submarine base, where 360 degree projections of moving images wrapped around one, telling the story of Matisse, or Frida Kahlo, or whatever show they have going at the time. The images bounce through the old heavy arches and among the dark still waters of the mirrored and haunted bays.

I don't know why I'm telling you about this.

Somehow that casting of light informed these images as well, though I find I cannot yet explain it.

Here are some pictures of the city we were in for eleven days. This is how it was to me, and maybe all the more now that it feels like a dream. It is the usual moments of a European city, with rooftops and staircases, parks and fish and birds, cathedrals, fountains, and transit. But all, I hope, a little special.

Back home to what may or may not be home

 

We have returned to something like home after finding a city we adored but where we could not manage to find an apartment to rent, at least as of yet. Our search will carry on remotely for now while we perhaps start to ramp up a personal campaign to love where we are a little bit more? After all, this may be it.

Along with many things to be discussed further, I not least come back with a phone stuffed full of photographs of where we've been for eleven days. I have been posting some of these over the last week, while I was on the road, and I would say that I was fishing (pun intended, um, you know, because several of the pictures were of fish) for a new style to convey my feelings about that extraordinary ordinary French city. I feel this flailing search produced some middling results over the past couple of days here, but working on a phone it was harder for me to see how they were coming up short. 

Fortunately, we went to an absolutely fantastic contemporary museum that was in our neighborhood there, and the wonderful main exhibit was all in green light, from where the artist drew much of its power, and it was huge and immersive, making great use of the brilliant architecture that is all over that city and where the museum was set. Apparently this inspiration was what I needed to kick off some relatively simple ideas about colors that have unleashed a new wave of  image modulations that while surprisingly minimal, are exactly the thing I was looking for but didn't know I was looking for.

Before we get probably too far into all that, I will show you the images that started me down the road and let that be enough for today, an introduction of sorts. To give a fair sense of the space I drew from, I am inclined to tell you that these images are mostly only altered in the selective changing of elements to red:

Just a cathedral

 

Sitting here in the shade under a cathedral that started out a thousand years ago, but where most of the work was done about 800 to 600 years ago, and where a woman named Eleanor was married to a king, becoming the Queen of France, who later became the Queen of England after getting her marriage annulled and marrying the King of England, I find my usual difficulties in photographing these extraordinary Gothic cathedrals.

Here’s the best of what I have managed so far.

The pond

 

The other day, in one of the most lovely cities I’ve ever been to, I had the not so common opportunity to spend an extended amount of time wandering at will, taking pictures, with every option before me.

Perhaps in line with my nature, I ended up in a small park next to a museum, spending a good deal of time photographing fish.

We take what comes our way.

The city in lines

 

I am still on the road in Western Europe, flinging about, slightly homeless, although with our regular home back on the Mediterranean there, and remaining a bit cagey about the location of everything, what with our being on the run from the law, who monitors Clerk Manifesto at all times.

Actually, no one seems to monitor Clerk Manifesto at all times.

Anyway, we are in a lovely city I adore, and here is the latest collection of pictures from it. They are kind of a scattering, applying a small effect that I like enough for this series, but don’t feel likely to pursue beyond this.

So enjoy these while they last.