elrectanguloenlamano: CONTINUITY OF PARIS: A PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT

Text and Pictures by José Horna

1999 / Pont d´Iéna. Paris V
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

The blog continuidaddeparis.blogspot.com -atypical regarding its structure and aims- is devoted to a photographic project stemming from the junction of words and imagery, placing itself midway between the ´exhibition´ and ´the book´, simultaneously enabling anyone watching it to be able to express his / her opinion about himself / herself, its ultimate purpose being to seek after a rendezvous of both dialogue and ideas exchange along with standpoints on the topics tackled within Julio Cortazar´s texts and José Horna´s photographs.

1999 / Les Tuileries. Paris
Nikon F4s / Tamron 28mm
Fuji Neopan 400

2005 / Villa de l'Ermitage. Paris XX
Leica M3 / Summicron 35
Fuji Neopan 400

That´s the way Paris slowly wipes us out, delightfully, grinding us between old flowers and wine stained paper tablecloths, with its colourless fire running at twilight coming out of the gnawed arcades. An invented fire burns us, an incandescent tura, a contrivance of the race, a city being the Great Screw, the horrible needle with its night eye through which the Senna river thread flows, a torture machine like daggers, death throes within a cage overcrowded with raged swallows. We blaze in our work, a fabulous mortal honor, high challenge of the phoenix. Nobody will heal you from the muffled and achromatic fire running at sunset along the rue de la Huchette. Incurable, perfectly incurable, we choose the Great Screw as a tura, we bow before it, we go into it, inventing it once and again every day, with each wine spot on the tablecloth, with each moss kiss during the dawns of the Cour de Rohan, we think up our fire, burning from inside to outside. Maybe that´s the choice, perhaps the words are wrapping this up like the napkin the bread and the scent is within it, the fluffing up flour, the aye without the nay or the nay without the aye, the day without Manes, without Ormuz or Arimán, once and for all, peacefully and that´s enough. Rayuela, Chapter 73.

1989 / Notre Dame. Paris IV
Minolta X-300 / Tamron 70-200
Ilford HP5 400

2005 / Parc Georges Brassens. Paris XV
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

By this time we do celebrate the 25th Anniversary of some deeds striking roots into a more or less aware, somewhat unfinished lasting search in time ...

It took place a February morning, at a Rue du Commerce newstand´s, near Motte-Piquet. On buying the newspaper with which carrying out the ceremonial of the matutinal Libération-croissant inside the corner café, I found out on the last news column that Julio Cortázar had died precisely there, in Paris, the day before.Perhaps it was the closeness, maybe the reference to another person jutting out from the surrounding anonimity, or, likewise, the recollection of a story which I´d read long ago: Continuity of the Parks. I don´t know. Truth is that following day, at a bookseller´s next to the La Muette, I bought -together with the last magazines delving into political current events-, a volume of his Anthology of Short Stories.

2005 / Rue 4 Septembre. Paris II
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

1991 / Quai des Grands Augustins. Paris VI
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Kodak T-MAX 3200 rated at ISO 800

The rest of the tale is a long chain of disclosures and new coincidences story by story, one book after another, till flowing into Rayuela. So, I was discovering that a lot of my steps through Paris were steadily set up on other previous ones; that the next ones found the trail of somebody who had already walked that way. A common ground, a mutual share and share alike, a search struggling between the hope of the impossible meeting and the fear of a sole end reduced to a
rough awakening in front of a Parisian graveyard.

1991 / Rue Sevigné. Paris III
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Kodak Tri-X 400

1991 / Les Halles. Paris I
Minolta X-300 / Tamron 70-200
Ilford Delta 400

From scratch, the Continuity of Paris Project as such was not a theoretical musing, but rather a surprising experience being depicted in the Pont des Arts picture - another cold winter morning, seven years after my stay in Paris coinciding with the demise of Julio Cortázar - currently occupying the page 51 of the book project and the fifteenth entry of the blog. As I was raising the camera and framing the secluded man figure, unaware of the other people, the starting words of Rayuela Chapter 1 were spouting from my memory: ´Would I find the Magician woman? So many times it had sufficed watching the arch facing the Quai de Conti, after coming through la rue de Seine ... ´

1991 / Pont des Arts. Paris VI
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Kodak T-MAX 3200 rated at ISO 800

2005 / Pointe du Vert Galant. Paris I (In the background the Pont des Arts)
Leica M3 / Summicron 35
Fuji Neopan 400

That clash meant the revision of other previous shots, the strengthening of their evoking power with might and main, and then the first rough draft of a book project joining texts and photographs with which striving after a dialogue on a different level, to wit, that one inherent to a city.

2005 / Galérie Vivienne. Paris II
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

1989 / Square Saint Jacques. Paris IV
Minolta X-300 / Tamron 70-200
Ilford HP5 400

Perhaps within the murky and unfolded scope of the city - which had turned more obvious for me after the reading of 62 Model to assemble - the chase could be steadily restarted through every nuance, landscape and return of the fake mirrors simultaneously being reflected and unveiled by them. Without the tying of the straight and unidirectional lines, both words and images would manage to create -or recreate- the conditions for remembrances and feelings setting up galleries beyond the coincidences of times and places, beyond twenty years, beyond the gravestones and the casting into oblivion.

1999 / Les Puces de Clignancourt. Paris XVIII
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Metro Saint Michel. ( ´ The most intimate saloon on the Left Bank´) Paris V
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF 50mm
Fuji Neopan 400

The subjectivity of the words and image choice - in spite of the clues contributed by themselves - , probably will raise different interpretations, but never alluding to the mere consideration of Rayuela´s ´staged illustration ´ or ´ lineal journey ´across the Parisian geographic references depicted in that or other works by Julio Cortázar. Suffice it to say that a simple glance on the spot will enable you to recognize, among other things, that the fire which ran through the rue of La Huchette has helped for a long time - and save for underground-jazzy exceptions to light the burners of the shis-kebabs and the brochettes of all the restaurants for tourists currently distinguishing it. But that flame - all the fires being the fire after all - may be licking the stones of other streets and corners. And Paris can still keep its talent to carry you away to that built-in and alien territory of the city where reflection and transparency melt. It´s a matter of looking for new doors or the lastingness of the old passages.

2005 / Rue de la Huchette (Caveau de la Huchette). Paris V
Leica M3 / Summicron 35
Fuji Neopan 400

2005 / Passage des Panoramas. Paris II
Leica M3 / Summicron 35
Fuji Neopan 400

To sum up, it could be either imagined (by people looking at it) or wished (by those ones having fulfilled it) a recognition of current images caused by the texts, and at the same time, the doors opening towards the original words by means of the conjunction of the pictures, which on their turn, offer possibilities to other stories as to different boundaries and meanings, not being contingent at all the ambiguity on their relative untemporality or regarding their random definition as a social documentalism, photographic humanism, surrealistic views of Paris or
hyperrealistic sights of the city.

2005 / Impasse Lebouis. (Desde la Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson). Paris XIV
Leica M3 / Summicron 35
Fuji Neopan 400

1989 / Centre Pompidou. Beaubourg. Paris III
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Ilford HP5 400

Whatever it may be, the question of what is or what does the Continuity of Paris photographic project want to be remains pending. A rayuela without evident numbers? A puzzle without strictly outlined edges? Or a book of textual and graphic clippings with suggestions not to renounce to the chance of trespassing the entrance halls communicating with the city? I hope the answer will only take shape and meaning in each person opening it and unlocking himself / herself to it.

2005 / Notre Dame. Paris IV
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Rue Mouffettard. Paris V
Nikon F4s / Tamron 28mm
Fuji Neopan 400

Now then, will it be feasible to convey and share these experiences? Does it make any sense to try expressing the impossibility of putting an end to that city which, in this case, has clotted around Paris and somebody who walked, walks and will walk through it? It´s all the same ... In the end, the relief of knowing that it won´t be the last time will remain. Once again, as in all the coming backs, you´ll have there that unexpected unmarked tube ticket found inside your pocket and you keep resigned to give it a new opportunity on each threshold or corner, so adding other relationships or scents to the previous ones.

2005 / Rue Cloche-Perce. Paris IV
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Canal Saint Martin. Paris X
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

The first rough copy of Continuity of Paris was finished in mid 2004. The critical revision of it, adding up the contrast of other viewpoints, subsequently persuaded me that the ideal implementation of the project should be the publication of a book and not merely ma catalogue or exhibition of pictures.

1999 / Place des Vosgues. Paris IV
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Near Stalingrad Square ( ´ I love your wife ´ ). Paris XIX.
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

Following that discernment, I undertook a new selection preserving a guiding thread suitable to the links between words and images I was after. That second advanced sketch, almost utterly configured, improved significantly the external appraisal of the work, clearing the way for the concrete chance of its publication.

1999 / Musée d'Orsay. Paris VII
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Rue Rivoli. Paris I
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

Nevertheless, a matter which could seem purely ´technical´ made me change the content once more: the system of pictures taking.

Though I have departured from analogue images at every moment, I had still to carry out the challenge of tackling a new encounter with Paris ´ in the classic manner ´; id est, without any reflex cameras, zooms, direct meterings or other technical breakthroughs, but only equipped with a rangefinder Leica M3 camera and some prime fixed focal length lenses (specially Summicron 50 mm f/2 and Summicron 35 mm f/2) and manual metering.

2005 / Place Frehel. ( ´ You must distrust words ´ ) Paris XX
Leica M3 / Summicron 50
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Saint Michel Tube Station. Paris V
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF 50mm
Fuji Neopan 400

The result of this experience - that I could carry out in March 2005, also checking that the difference has a tendency to be more regarding the inception of the photographic style than only a technical one - was the adding of 25 new pictures and the compilation of a third and definitive version of the book / project.

1999 / Champs Elysées. Paris VIII
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

1999 / Luxembourg. Paris V
Nikon F4s / Nikkor AF-D 80-200
Fuji Neopan 400

Henceforth, the subject posed is the difficulty of publication of a book featuring these traits - for which in principle I only count on the author´s rights of Julio Cortazar´s texts exemption - due to the substantial costs of edition and printing, which implies the need of an editorial support enabling to face its putting into effect within suitable margins in which the artistic creation is not constrained by unsurmountable economic hindrances.

1992 / Cimetière du Père Lachaise. (Grave of Jim Morrison. January 1st 1992) Paris XX
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Kodak T-MAX 3200 rated at ISO 800

Arco de La Défense.
Minolta X-300 / Rokkor 50 mm
Kodak t-max 3200 rated at ISO 800

Well, this is the project. To answer the purpose, so much the better will be to wait for the opinions it may bring forth and its future as a work pending to be published and exposed. A waiting which could well resemble to this quote of the Rayuela´s Chapter 36: ´ to spread out to the crystalization of the desire, to the encounter. Be watchful, Horacio´, Oliveira wrote down sitting on the railing under the bridge, hearing the snorings of the clochards below his leaps of newspapers and burlaps.