Snapshot of History: Unveiling Maxime Du Camp's Salt Print Masterpiece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Discover a rare Maxime Du Camp salt print at the Met, a pioneering work of travel photography with ties to Gustave Le Gray and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

I’m in the Metropolitan Museum of Art today; I am captivated by a remarkable piece of photographic history - a salt print from the French photographer Maxime Du Camp. This print, possibly developed in Gustave Le Gray’s studio, holds a rich narrative beyond its visual allure.

Maxime Du Camp, a journalist with no prior experience in photography, learned the craft under the tutelage of Le Gray shortly before embarking on an ambitious journey to Egypt and the Near East in 1849. Accompanied by Gustave Flaubert, Du Camp set out to meticulously document ancient monuments and archaeological sites. Their expedition, which extended up the Nile and into Palestine, Turkey, and Greece, culminated in the influential album “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie,” published in 1852. This collection, showcasing 125 photographs, was a pioneering effort in the field of travel photography and earned Du Camp instant acclaim.

What makes this piece at the Met even more intriguing is its possible provenance. It is thought to have once belonged to the esteemed architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. The print in the Met’s collection, part of a private printing that goes beyond the published edition, is notable for its warm color and luminescence, traits that enhance its historical and aesthetic value.

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Eating a Beignet in New Orleans: Classic Portrait Photography

A photo of a cousin’s friend eating a beignet at the Café du Monde in the old casino building in New Orleans’s City Park.

I was home for the Summer. We went to the Café du Monde in City Park 🌃. A kid eats a beignet with glee. One rule when eating a New Orleans-style powdered fried cake - always eat it with glee.

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Advice on Priorities from François Truffaut's 1973 Classic Film "Day for Night"

François Truffaut's film Day for Night

Transcript of the Scene (for context)

Julie: Liliane ran off with the stuntman. 

Joëlle: Does Alphonse know?  

Julie: I had to tell him. 

Joëlle: With the stuntman? I'd drop a guy for a film. I'd never drop a film for a guy!

While the quote is not an advertisement for self-imposed celibacy, it is a funny take on priorities. I interpret this quote as choosing art over carnal pleasure. Also, Joëlle's comment, "I'd drop a guy for a film. I'd never drop a film for a guy!" is an accurate barometer of Truffaut's feelings - and passion for - filmmaking. 

Have I ever ditched a guy to go to a movie instead? In New York, where there are dozens of select film screenings of the world's best cinema - yes - I have chosen movies over men. 

Have you ever ditched a guy (or a girl) so you could pursue your love of movies (or anything resembling art and artmaking)? Let me know in the comments.
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Image Source: François Truffaut's La nuit américaine (Day for Night) © 1973

Movie Review: Dolan's Mommy Opens Screens

Antoine-Olivier Pilon (as Steve) opens the frame in Mommy (2014) - A review of Xavier Dolan's 2014 film Mommy, a movie that explores the relationship between a troubled adolescent boy with his mother and a neighbor who becomes an unexpected ally.

There is a moment in Xavier Dolan's film, Mommy (2014), where Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon), a troubled teenager who has been dispatched to several group homes and is now living with his mother after he caught fire to the cafeteria and seriously injured another boy, breaks open the screen. It's an interesting moment.

Poetry Repost: "I am what I am"

By Jacques Prevert

Tercerunquinto.
I Am What I Am

I am what I am
I am made like that
When I have a desire to laugh
Yes, I laugh with a burst of laughter
I like the him who likes me
And it isn't my fault
If it isn't always the same him
That I love every time
I am what I am
What do you want more
What do you want of me

I am made to please
And I can't change a thing
My heels are too high
My waist too arched
My breasts much too hard
And my eyes too dark
And then what is more
What can that be to you
I am what I am
I please who I please
What can that be to you
What has happened to me
Yes I've loved someone
Yes someone has loved me
Like children love each other
Just know how to love
Love to love
Why ask me questions
I am there to please you

Tercerunquinto.
I Am What I Am
Installation view, Ikon Eastside 2008
Photo: Stuart Whipps

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This is Just to Say; Or, A Reflection on Desire

William Carlos William's very short poem "This Is Just To Say" frustrated me on my first read. Is this a poem? These few words? 28. Words. Seem to say everything. At least something. Not nothing. Something to say about desire, I take it? A fresh plum in the refrigerator that sits there expectantly, wanting to be eaten. I eat it. It is so cold, sweet, delicious.

The beauty of the poem is that it cannot be said any other way. What I mean to say is that if I wanted to tell someone about this poem I would have to read it out:

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
...that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I cannot paraphrase it. It is the poem itself that utters its meaning. I could translate the poem.

C'est juste pour dire
par William Carlos Williams

J'ai mangé
des prunes
... qui ont été
dans la glacière

et qui
tu as probablement
épargne 
pour le petit dejeuner

Pardon moi
ils étaient délicieux
si doux
et si froid

Is my translation adequate? No matter. 
The translation would have to be another poem. I mean. The same poem. Written under the same conditions. I am afraid I am not a poet. Even if I were a poet I would have to be convicted to write a poem such as this one. I would have to be William Carlos Williams. I can only present an ersatz -- both in translation and in paraphrase. It would have to be a translation written by a poet in the same mind as Williams. The translation would have to stand alone as a piece of poetry as simple and beautiful as the original English. A bad translation would take away from the poemness of the original. Worse than a bad translation is a bad paraphrase: to say, "Oh, that poem is just about some guy who ate his girlfriend's plum that was not his to take that he took out of the refrigerator." There are two things wrong with the previous statement. First, it is a gross estimation of affairs. Second, it adds its own interpretation that was intuited, absconded, I should say, from the original. I cannot intuit from a poem and call my intuition the poem. The intuition, that it was a girlfriend's plum, is an intuition that could be countered. It may have been a boyfriend's plum. It could have been a plum in the icebox at work. 
The intimacy of the poem seems to suggest something intimate, something personal, something non-work related. 
To take the plum from a stranger, a co-worker, even someone who lives with you, but is not a lover, is not what is evoked in this poem. I just know it is an intimate partaking of the plum uninvited. It is at the level of togetherness and separation that this poem speaks. The three ellipses in the first stanza attest to the hesitation I speak of. The probably hints at "knowing your habits," the "you" an instance of the intimate second person. The forgive is only to be understood by the confession itself: a declaration, not a confession. It is not so much the narrator admits to eating the plum but he declares -- and here is the simplicity — that they were "delicious / so sweet / and so cold." The guilt is not there. Not even in the forgiving. Is the narrator asking to be forgiven for his own desire? No. If he knew it to be wrong he would not have done it. Or he would have given another reason. "Forgive me / they were not mine/ but yours / not mine to take." There is no impunity either. This is not a poem about release from moral obligation. A simple declaration of desire. Desire qua desire. Desire that happens upon an encounter with an object of desire. The natural affinity of a person to sate his desire. And to realize, perhaps, afterward, oh wait, the desire is yours to partake as well. In my desiring the deliciousness, the sweetness, the coldness, I forgot about our togetherness, or co-habitation, our couplehood. And only here, in my presentation. It is an ersatz.

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For William Carlos Williams's poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" click here.

Common French Phrases with English Translations

French	Literal Translation	English Equivalent
Avoir mal au coeur	To have a pain in the heart	To feel sick to the stomach
Bouche cousue!	Mouth sewn up!	Mum’s the word!
La bête à bon Dieu	God’s fool	A ladybug or a ladybird
Dites, “Qurante-quatre!”	Say, “Forty-four!”	Say, “Ah!”
Poisson d’avril	April fish	April’s fool
Gober la mouche	To swallow the fly	Swallow the bait, a gullible person swallows it, “hook, line, and sinker”
Ecriture de chat	Cat’s writing	Scribble scratch
Avoir le cafard	To have the cockroach	To be down in the dumps
Mets le dans ta pouche avec ton mouchoir dessus	Put it in your pocket with your handkerchief on top	Put it in your pipe and smoke it
Jouer à saute — mouton	To play jump-sheep	To play leap-frog
Revenons a nos mouton	Let’s get back to our sheep	Let’s get back to the subject
Vouloir, c’est pouvoir	To wish is to be able	To wish is to be able
A bon chat, bon rat	To the good cat, a good rat	To the good cat, a good rat
Le chouchou de prof	The teacher’s cabbage	The teacher’s pet
dent-de-lion	Lion’s tooth	a dandelion
Il m’aime un peau...beaucoup...passionnement...à la folie...pas du tout	He loves me a little...a lot...passionately..madly… not at all	He loves me…he loves me not
Si jeunesse savait, si viellesse pouvait	If the young only knew, if the old only could	Youth is wasted on the young
Le champ est libre	The field is clear	The coast is clear
A bon chien, il ne vient jamais un bon os	A good dog never gets a good bone	Nice guys finish last
On aurait entendu une mouche voler	You could have heard a fly fly	You could have heard a pin drop
Mettre la puce à l’oreille à quelqu’un	To put the flea in someone’s ear	To annoy someone
Avoir le main verte	To have a green hand	To have a green thumb
Être beurré	To be buttered	To be plastered
Latin de cuisine	Kitchen Latin	Pig Latin
C’est du chinois	It’s Chinese	It’s Greek to me

Lagniappe:
Words with ugly meanings but beautiful sounds in French

la poubelle	garbage can
un ronfleur	a snorer
une mouffete	a skunk
une toilette	a toilet

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Anatomy of a Scene: Au Revoir Les Enfants (Scene 20)

Movie Still - Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

In Louis Malle's haunting autobiographical film, Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), figures come out of the Northern European mist as if half-dead, draped in dark shrouds of black. The setting is not Auschwitz or the Western front, but a small Catholic boarding school outside of Paris, Winter 1944, months before the fall of the Third Reich. Malle's focus is not the battlefield, nor is it the concentration camp, but rather, he focuses his exploration on the effects of racism and evil on the lives of young French adolescent boys holed up in a confined space, apart from their upper-class parents. The school's headmaster, Father Jean, has decided to matriculate three new students at the start of the Winter term. What no one knows is that the three new students are, in fact, Jewish stowaways, hidden by the school to save their lives. In this scene (scene 20, according to Malle's screenplay), students are marching to the public baths for their periodic soapy wash. The scene is a mixture of everyday rituals of boarding school life, similar to other scenes in the film, of the boys sleeping, praying, attending class, playing war games, playing the piano, and taking tests. The "normal," almost painterly scenes are punctuated by news from the war zone: talk of hatred against Jews, the Resistance, French collaborators with the Germans, and the impending intimidation enforced by the conquering Germans. Rations are scarce. Even the wealthy schoolboys suffer; their only allowance is jam and sugar which they exchange for cigarettes. France is occupied by Germany but the Resistance is rumbling. News of German defeat on the Russian front has been circulating.