Visit www.FranceRevisited.com for the full experience, or get directly intimate with the new photography section by clicking here.

If you’re currently receiving the feed to this page, please go to the new version and get the feed from there.

See you there!

Return soon for the continued posts and original work for, by or about photographers and artists in France — and elsewhere. And paid photographers and artists at that. Yes paid… provided that enough visitors click on ads so to increase the revenue of this free magazine.

More about that when the new version of France Revisited is launched at the end of the month.

The colors of joy and reminiscence in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris in November. Photo GLK

First, here’s a photo by Astrid Smits of the Netherlands who came across this cat and boots while vacationing on a farm in Italy near Casole d’Elsa.

Photo by Astrid Smits

Astrid first met this beautiful female as a kitten last year and laid out a box for her to rest in. Imagine then Astrid’s surprise when she returned to the farm a year later and found that the cat was still fond of the same box even though she’s outgrown it. “One morning,” Astrid wrote, “I got up and looked outside and saw her sleeping in the box, next to my walking shoes.”

This next photo was sent by our number one contributing photographer Va-nu-pieds, a unique vision of an encounter while wandering the streets of Paris.

Photo by VNP

Like many Parisians I don’t own a car. The city offers many alternate means of transportation (metro, bus, Vélib bikes) and getting around on two wheels is definitely the most effective over short distances in this fairly compact capital.

My foreign friends often tell me how surprised they are to see cars parked so tightly along the street. They attribute Paris drivers with uncanny virtuosity when it comes to parking in tight spaces.

The red Citroën 2 CV (called the “deux-chevaux” in French, meaning two-horse) is the first to have caught my eye a few streets from my apartment. When I returned the following day to photograph it, several neighborhood residents came up to me and said “She’s a beauty, huh?, and she starts right up.” Several days later, also in my neighborhood, the sight of a Diane blue Citroën gave me the idea to create a blue-white-red automobile, colors of the French flag, on the occasion of the Motor Show. I found the white one outside of Paris.

Le 2 octobre s’ouvre comme chaque année à Paris le Mondial de l’Automobile.

Comme de nombreux parisiens, je ne possède pas de voiture. La ville me propose toutes sortes de moyens de transports alternatifs (métro, bus, Vélib) et le déplacement en deux-roues est incontestablement le plus efficace sur les petites distances… et comme Paris est une capitale peu étendue…

Mes amis étrangers se disent souvent surpris de voir les voitures garées le long des rues, très serrées. Ils attribuent donc spontanément au conducteur parisien une virtuosité hors pair pour se garer dans un mouchoir de poche.

C’est la 2 CV (on dit deux chevaux) Citroën rouge qui a la première retenu mon regard à quelques rues de chez moi. Quand je suis revenu le lendemain la photographier, des riverains se sont approchés : « Elle est belle, hein ? et elle démarre au quart de tour ! ». Quelques jours plus tard, toujours dans mon quartier, c’est une Diane bleue Citroën qui m’a donné l’idée de construire un bleu-blanc-rouge automobile à l’occasion du Mondial. Mais c’est hors de Paris que j’ai trouvé cette 2 chevaux blanche.

- Photos and French text VNP. English translation GLK.

Pointe du Layet is right next to Cap Nègre, famous as Carla’s family residence and hence that of her husband the president. Carla and Nicolas prefer Cap Nègre to Fort de Brégançon, an official presidential vacation residence that’s only a few kilometers away.

Shot from below, this is a eucalyptus (left), which gives off subtle fragrances in the heat of the sunny in the south.

Dans le cadre des études France Revisited sur le rapport entre les arbres et les lieux, voici trois images prises par Stanislas Illya Yankovich sur la côte méditerranéenne entre Toulon et St Tropez à la Pointe du Layet. Mais attention aux visiteurs pudiques: l’endroit est déclaré naturiste
 
La Pointe du Layet se trouve juste à côté du Cap Nègre, célèbre par la résidence familiale de Carla qui y accueille son président de mari, qu’ensemble ils préfèrent à l’officiel Fort de Brégançon qui n’est distant que de quelques kilomètres.

Pris par en dessous, c’est un eucalyptus (à gauche) qui, dans la chaleur du soleil du Midi, dégage de subtiles effluves.

And these two are “tortured” pines by the sea.
 
Et les deux autres sont des pins “torturés” par la mer.

Photos Stanislas Illya Yankovitch

Still, the desire to be outside and the need for nature are irrepressible. Returning to Parc de Sceaux, I continue my photographic experiments: alone against a tree,
Pourtant l’envie du dehors, le besoin de nature est irrépressible. De retour au Parc de Sceaux, je continue mes expériences : seul contre un arbre,

toes fanning out (a French expression meaning total inactivity),
les doigts de pied en éventail (une expression française qui dit la totale inactivité),

involving a couple of kind tourists with their feet in the water,
impliquant un couple de gentils touristes les pieds dans l’eau,

or playing between shadows and light.
ou jouant entre ombres et lumières.

And this is Paris’s emptiest week of the year: I’ll be here to take advantage of it!
Et c’est ce week end que Paris sera le plus vide de l’année : je serai là pour en profiter!

Photos and text: VNP

The Declaration, which is fully spelled out in the Concorde station, sets forth fundamental rights in France (and beyond). Now a part of the Preamble of the French Constitution, the Declaration was adopted on Aug. 26, 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly and ratified under duress by King Louis XVI on October 5, 1789, spelling the beginning of the end of the feudal system and the Ancien Régime.

Translation: No one may be questioned about his opinions, even religious, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law… and provided that he does not hold them while smoking in the metro.

- Image and text: GLK

Ian Patrick in his studio by Canal Saint Martin in Paris. Photo GLK.

Born in 1951, Ian Patrick became interested in photographing veterans when he first accompanied his father William on a visit to Normandy. The elder Patrick, to whom the book is dedicated, landed at Utah Beach on June 17, 1944. In his portrait of 1994, the 50th anniversary, he stands by the grave of a high school friend in the American Cemetery.

For the past 25 years, Ian Patrick has been photographing the sites, people, and events surrounding D-Day ceremonies in Normandy. In this collection of portraits, released last year on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landing with the support of France’s national Musée de l’Armée, he set out to present “The horror of war and the joy of the liberated, two intangible sensations which have been my inspiration for this photo essay.”

The black-and-white portraits of participants in the events of June 1944—American, British, French, German—and the brief accompanying texts (in French and in English) of their memories and reflections are at once proud, moving, and humble.

.

Cover of Ian Patrick's Portraits: Anonymous Heroes

Ian Patrick has lived in Paris since 1979 and now also has French citizenship. His work has appeared The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Bob Marley and Andy Warhol are among the many well-known faces whose portraits he captured while working in New York in the 1970s.

Reduced-size copies of some of the photographs Portraits: Anonymous Heroes can be seen at d-dayportraits.com. For more examples of Ian Patrick’s work also see ianpatrickphotos.com and ianpatrickimages.com.

For more articles about Normandy and the Landing Beaches on France Revisited click here.