Armed with a Leica M6 rangefinder, Peter O’Toole first visited Paris in 1996 and quickly discovered the double pleasure of meandering through the city and photographing it. He soon became a flâneur (from the French verb flâner), meaning a stroller, a saunterer, a loiterer in the peaceable yet restless sense of the word.
A flâneur is a man about town, often alone, out to experience the city not so much as a gathering place for a dense population but rather as an anonymous and varied space where he encounters buildings, streets, shop windows, parks, gardens and cafés. Every visitor who has spent more than a few days in Paris understands how well the French capital lends itself to “flanning.”
“Flanning” is a dreamy state, bemused though not ironic, perhaps melancholic though never depressed, often witnessing but not reflecting too deeply or at great length—there is always another scene or another street to draw his attention away from a singular thought. On his slow, idling stroll through the city, the flâneur abandons himself to the sights and sounds and scenes and views and oddities of the moment.
Paris Photos – Paris Walks, a handsome 176-page, hardback, black-and-white photographic essay, is the fruit of O’Toole’s “flanning” in Paris between 1996 and 2007. O’Toole lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The book was printed in Minneapolis.
As a flâneur, O’Toole rarely stops to talk with people (we encounter few in his photographs), though occasionally he observes them. Mostly he avoids crowds, except to occasionally view them from a distance.
Does he wish that he could enter into or be a part of a social scene? I don’t know. But in the absence of a willingness or ability to take part in the social life of the city, it appears from these photos that O’Toole would rather have the streets of Paris himself.
In O’Toole’s Paris it is mid-spring (tulips are coming up, and the linden leaves are budding the garden of Palais Royal) or summer (the roses are out in the Bagatelle Garden and the trees provide full shade in the Boulogne Woods) or September (the leaves of the horse chestnut trees have begun falling in Place Dauphine). In any case it is light jacket weather. There is often dampness in the air.
The long shadows in many images indicate that the photographer is especially fond of Paris within an hour or two or sunrise or sunset.
Tourists are avoids: the courtyard of the Louvre is empty, the top of Montmartre is quiet. Yet as a flâneur Peter O’Toole is clearly a visitor, so even if he doesn’t necessarily seek out the clichés of Paris, he does have a romanticized view of the city.
His gaze in the book’s 150 tri-tone black-and-white photographs, some grainy depending on the film speed, seems to seek out Paris of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. One could easily mistake these images as coming from earlier decades. Whether shot from the hip or with a tripod or with camera to the eye, his Leica is a tool for nostalgia.
Most of the photographs, O’Toole says, are presented full-frame and uncropped, but he has nevertheless shielded his lens from any indications of a contemporary evolving city. Woody Allen shares that view in presenting the city’s easy-going and “natural” beauty in his film “Paris at Midnight”; Allen’s streets and shops and cafés, like O’Toole’s, are always inviting, rarely crowded. The city employees, waiters and tradesmen work earnestly, unobtrusively, without complain.
There is tendency in such a collection of photographs or such a movie to gloss over the realities of city life, but whereas Allen’s characters are fatally stuck in their search to simultaneously express private wealth and personal fulfillment, O’Toole, to his credit, seems to enjoy the romanticized city without visible angst.
The 150 photographs of O’Toole’s book are ostensibly presented in the form of a series of promenades, with each of the 14 sections preceded by a map outlining the photographer’s route and a brief introductory text in both French and English. However, Paris Walks shouldn’t be seen as a call to take specific routes but rather as an invitation to flâner on your own.
Paris Photos ~ Paris Walks by Peter J. O’Toole is 176 pages hardbound, with 150 tri-tone black and white Paris photographs arranged in 14 chapters each representing a separate area of the city. Published in 2009, with a first printing of 1700 copies, it is available in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and on Amazon.com. Retail price: $44.95.
© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut