Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Partager Bibliothèque Nationale de France Richelieu



Bienvenue to the Bibliothéque Nationale de France Richelieu.  An enriching experience for an afternoon out of the moins zero degrees it has been in Paris lately.   Over the weekend, I needed some detente to reset my neural system...so I found it here.  My mentor (more on that later) had recommended this "Special Expostion Virturelle" by Michael Kenna.  This was the right thing...a simple ride on the metro, and I was there, winding my way around to the front entrance, I also came across the back door, which I would have loved to take this sweet rooster door knocker with me for a future home in the country somewhere...sigh...

Once inside, thawed out from my petit tour of the neighborhood, I headed straight for the bookstore where the SOLDES beckoned me and immediatley found several books for future drawing projects, inspirational gifts for artist friends, and always the silly card for my son.  Now.. to find my way to the real reason I came..Mr. Kenna's Zen Photos..We connected immediately, since he and I were born in the same year...small thing, but it can be important for that neural connection I was searching for that day.  His photos are comforting, taking you to landscapes where your needs are met, focusing on unusual fragments of a scene, with etheral lightening, resulting from taking his shots at dawn or dusk, I imagine...  when person, no one, is around to interrupt the site, the thought, ...the total feel of the moment, actually moments since some of them are with exposures are up to 10 hours, he captures and delivers these dream-like scenes to you.  His photographs are shot mainly with a Hasselblad medium format camera, a dream camera for most.  This exposition was focused, actually only somewhat focused, on "fragments, trees, chaos and harmony, weather and melancholy".  I felt as though I was waiting for something to happen, for someone to enter these caught existences...but no one interrupted the scenes, no one entered my space at all;  people are not part of his search.  Only I was there to appreciate his captures...a great recommendation for me to find the reset button for the week.

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