Paris in Winter I : Pere LaChaise Cemetary
What could be better than a weekend trip away to a beautiful, vibrant city with friends? Last weekend saw me doing just that with the PhotographySchool.NL's annual weekend away, this year to Paris. Winter in Paris is something special, with the leafless trees allowing more of an uninterrupted view of the architecture and monuments.
Our first day was spent wandering the expansive Pere LaChaise Cemetery which is the final resting place of so many great cultural icons from through last few centuries. My highlight was seeing the marvellous Jacob Epstein monument to Oscar Wilde, a 20 ton piece of English limestone installed in 1912, carved into the shape of a fantastical art-deco male sphinx, so at odds with the majority of the rest of the 19th century funerary monuments in the cemetery. For an extensive investigation into the history and aesthetics of the monument Ellen Crowell's article "Oscar Wilde's Tomb: Silence and the Aesthetics of Queer Memorial" is worth a read.
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That seen, meandering through the seemingly endless rows and sections of monuments I seemed drawn to the angels adorning graves, the mourning and emotional sculptures really speaking to me and dominating the images I then made with my trusty Fuji XT-1 in hand.
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(All images taken on Fuji XT-1 + 35mm f/1.4 and processed in Adobe Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro 2) |
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I find such places to be affecting and they truly impact my mood, making me contemplative and withdrawn, provoking a mindfulness to make the most of all opportunities that come our way during our short time on this earth.
Coming soon... Paris in Winter II : some landmarks