Day 1

So on the first day we arrived in Paris we went straight to the hotel we'd be spending the next few nights and got adjusted apart from that it was a quite night so from this point onwards I am going to refer to day 2 as day 1, and day 2 as 3 and so.

So on the first day we visited the Louvre, host of the famous Mona Lisa, we spent a good few hours drawing and admiring beautiful masterpieces such as  Aphrodite, known as the "Venus de Milo", Horses restrained by grooms, known as The Marly Horses and countless others.

Whilst at the Louvre I entered rooms filled with the most beautiful sculptures I had ever seen and spent the majority of my time at the Louvre in these two rooms

On the way back form the Louvre we passed a bridge absolutely covered in "love locks" which are basically a padlock attached to the bridge railing to symbolize the couples love, the couples names are inscribed on the padlock and the key is thrown away to symbolise the breaking love. This was perfect for me because my given topic was "key", I snapped as many photos as I could of the locks but, unfortunately getting a photo of the hidden treasure, a literal river of keys, below me would be near impossible, even though I couldn't get a shot of the keys the river itself was still incredibly beautiful.

Photos of the river of keys, unfortunately the endless amount of keys are completely invisible 

Day 2

The Centre Pompidou

We got up bright and early for this one so early that we were some of the first people to arrive that day, this meant that we had to stall a little before they opened, so i had time to take photos like these:

Once we actually got inside the first place i wanted to go was the very top and because the escalators are on the outside of the building and the walls around you are see through it led to this amazing mundane landscape photo of the Paris this was easily one of my favourite photos taken that day because I found that I was constantly on the look out for the sublime in Paris, and being Paris it was round every corner so it was quite rare to get this dull photo, what makes it so mundane in my eyes is the early morning fog spreads some of the colour out and the tint on the window also make this image the image slightly more monotone then it would be from outside of the plastic shield

My very washed out photo of Paris

Once I got into the Pompidou i wandered around as you do with limited things catching my attention apart from a few select thing:

I like this conceptual piece because of  massive use of colours

This piece because usually this would be
mundane but theres something about it
that makes it very sublime 

But, I personally, think the Pompidou really came through with the Andy Warhol exposition, his unique pop art really amazes me and as I stared in awe i actually remember to take a few photos:

Nikki de saint Phaile fountain

I thought that the Nikki de saint Phaile fountain was amazing because the the fountains themselves where responses to the art work inside The Centre Pompidou which is right next to it. A particular favourite of mine was the solitary musical note, i just found that among all the abstract art a little sense can be found in music

Day 3

Musee Rodin

When we arrived at the Musee Rodin we were greeted with a sticker(shown below) and shown into what I'd describe as a a courtyard of sorts. I thought the museum as a whole was very organised every little thing in order and proper, every leaf was their on purpose they had the exact amount of grass at the exact length in a perfect square, This perfectionism doesn't usually appeal to me because I believe in the beauty of nature, in my opinion I would have like to have seen a bit of asymmetry and the smallest bit of random in their museum but I have to admit it was gorgeous.

The Thinker

The first piece to catch my eye immediately was first called The Poet, Le Penseur (The Thinker) The Thinker was originally intended to represent Dante at the gates of Hell , pondering his poem.Unlike conventional representations of thought, as the goddess Athena draped and army, The Thinker by Rodin is a naked man, thus symbolizing the universality of thought and muscular, linking the exercise of the mind than the body .

This was easily by far my favourite sculpture from this trip maybe because knowing so much about it pire to seeing it and then actually seeing it in person really blew me away. I had already seen this before in many photos but actually being two feet away from it was something special and indescribable .

Musee d'Orsay

We later arrived at the Musse d'Orsay which is actually an old train station remodelled into an art gallery this makes for some really breath taking architecture, the enormous curved glass pane ceiling is art in itself, the shear hight  of the ceiling above makes you almost forget your in a museum at all, because the roof is mainly glass it lets in a really nice ambient light that just lights up the whole building with a flattering glow

 In my opinion the architecture of each room is what really makes this for me, not to say that the art themselves weren't enough but by making the entire building like they have everywhere you look their is something to see. Unfortunately due to some rules I wasn't able to get that many photos but where I was allowed to take photos, very few things I took photos of really blew me away expect for the photo I got of the entire building.

Day 4

l'Ossuaire Municipal (Catacombs)

When we arrive near the entrance of the catacombs we were immediately met with a monster of a queue and waited a good hour. It was well worth it in the end because we got to visit a massive part of actual French history. We were literally walking through a massive part of French history, not only that but it was, in it own way, almost beautiful. In a really weird way.

Whilst in the catacombs we saw an incredible amount of skull and bone, just walls and walls made from bodies, some people felt sick or ill but i felt sort of bad because when the catacombs were under construction they just dumped all the bones into a quarry completely unorganised and when someone finally did decide to do something about it, it was far to late to distinguish who's bones belonged to who  and we are left with just a mash of bones, skulls placed with other people bones. And, to me at least, I think that's incredibly sad because if someone was tracking a relative down or for any reason wanted to grieve how could they? they ancestor is now hidden and scattered across a sea of other bones.  

Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation

The Bresson Foundation was easily my favourite museum we went to the entire time for a similar reason I enjoyed "The Thinker" because just before we left for France I was just finishing up a few responses to his work, his photography style is so amazing, each photograph he takes can be analysed into such detail. You can really see how much effort goes into every photo he takes.

This is by far my favourite photo of the whole trip and I have a good idea why i like it so much, the image hasn't got a lot of detail but it still speaks volumes, it might be very monotone but that just adds to how good this photo is, the flock of birds and silhouette of a man in a trench coat work together so well 

I really enjoyed Sergio Lerains work because he didn't use conventional methods of photography, he does follow rule of thirds religiously he didn't blur his photos to create a focal point, instead he used other methods like fog/mist or, my favourite, negative space, he creates the most beautiful photos with negative space, because they're black and white with some lighting he creates almost silhouettes in every day life

Cimetière Du Montparnasse

The Cimetière Du Montparnasse is a famous french cemetery which houses some of the most famous people, including some name artist such as man ray and Baltsar Lobo

While we were in the cemetery we visited many generic graves but a few like Lobo's grave, were very interesting, Lobo's in particular because his grave was one of his own sculptures  

Title page

Final Response

My inspiration

Throughout the entire trip I saw virtually nothing but black and white images from years ago, almost nothing from the present day really, so for my final piece I didn't want to make a very modern sheik piece I felt that didn't describe my journey. I really like the style of Sergio Lerain, but it wasnt something I felt i could replicate to a standard in which I could call a final response, in the future I hope to experiment with some of his art styles but right now I'm going to look to another artist for my final response, so I wanted to capture an old felling in my photos without sacrificing image quality, not only this but I couldn't help but feel that one image was not enough to really show the beauty of Paris so, the idea of a collection of photos came to mind like a collage but not stitched together. And I came to the conclusion that polaroid's would be the way to go. They keep that old nostalgic feel and I could easily create lots of images on their own and then layer them on a single A3 image

My artist

So even though I thought everything we saw throughout this trip really awesome and nice, it wasn't really what I was looking for, so instead I chose to make my final piece a response to Susannah Conway, I really good polaroid photographer I found 

These three photos in particular because i think they really represent polaroid photography, the images alone have beautiful colours especially the ocean photo, that shade of royal blue, almost purple, not to say that the other photos are not as good I just think how the sky imitates the ocean and your left with a white horizontal streak across the middle is very well done    

I think I like her so much is because she is able to something quite dull, or something we see every day and make it this really beautiful photo. Like simple flowers on a twig, anyone else would pass them without a second thought but as you can see the quality of the image is outstanding 

This is one of my Favourite pieces she has done and I love it so much because how bright it is set a happy/cheerful tone and the tall grass swaying in the wind makes it very calming and soothing, I really feel like she has captured lazy summer afternoons just relaxing, bathing in the warm glow of the sun and put it on a polaroid, that's the only way I could describe this photo.

Evaluation

In my grid I have tried to create some form of order by using leading lines, I have made the center image have no real direction to it but the to two images to the left and right create a horizontal line, similarly the top and bottom images create a vertical line, this makes a focal point around the center image, for the cornors of the grid I added locks to link with my topic of keys, this repeating pattern has created some unwatned symmetry, but without it the picture becomes to disjointed and random. Unfortunately I was unable to get a really nice photo of some keys so in place I have an unlimited amount of locks and instead of literal keys I have added images of things that are "key" like the tree for example, trees are key to the survival of the planet and us, the railing is key to ensuring safety. Because I couldn't get many good photos of keys the one really good one I got has to become the centre of attention. I also like the contrast between the very vivid and bright tree and the dull wooden railing, because not only does it tie in with mundane and sublime but also with urban,(my personal topic) because nature being a high contrast with city life they work very well together.

For my final piece i had the brilliant idea of getting lots of polaroids and laying them out onto a wooden texture, I chose polaroids to get the old feeling I got from lots of the paris photograhpy without having to make them black and white, unfortunately in my mind this would look a lot better than what it came out as, which is a miss match of seemingly random and unrelated photos, as individual photos i think they look good but when put together something happens that just makes everything look awful, if I was to redo this piece I would have just tried to focus my attention on one image rather than a collection  , I got it into my head that one single image would never be enough so I usually look to animation or a collection of photos and I personally think that it never ends well because instead of one amazing photo I just have more of the same mediocre level work. For next time I just have to remind myself that quality is greater than quantity. That being said I still tried to make it as good as possible by getting the contrast between the trees running along the bottom, they are their to represent the season change and the cycle of life and death, I put them along the bottom because they sit either when attached to my made up floor this also comes into play with the stalactites being placed at the top of the page or the roof. Over all I am sadly very disappointed with the result of my hard work, it is just to cluttered and overwhelming. 

This is my favourite picture because I really enjoy polaroid photography and even though it didn't turn out exactly how id like it to in the future id like to experiment more and get some deeper research into artists and techniques