Do these photos reveal their date to you ? Taken yesterday or years ago ? Look closely. There may be clues. Was it unseasonably warm in Paris yesterday ? It’s March when everything is changing, and every day is five days in one.
It’s all one long day, isn’t it ? It stretches out over a lifetime and we order things by saying, This happened then. The skaters, in any case, are still hanging in the air, whether from yesterday or a decade ago.
«There is only one day left, always starting over : it is given to us at dawn and taken away at dusk. » A biblical sounding phrase from a modern existentialist.
And these images of young men in the air, what do they amount to ? I suppose if one of the skaters had later become famous, that would change the image, wouldn’t it ? Or if I told you that the images weren’t by me but by my friend Larry Clark, the well-known photographer and filmmaker, who currently has a show in the Marais here in Paris, that would put a different spin on it, yes ? You’d see it differently. Don’t believe either assertion. I made them up.
The Palais de Tokyo, its majestic Deco wings in the background of these photos, is part of the complex of buildings constructed for the 1937 Exposition Universelle or World’s Fair. Most of the structures were émphémère, destroyed after the Exposition was over. It today houses two museums, one modern art and the other contemporary, with a dark history all its own: its basements were where the Nazis stored the art, jewelry, clothing and furniture confiscated from Parisian Jews and others.
Days fly by
like water flooding an intricate path between monuments
wearing the stones down, carrying odd bits out to sea,
never losing its primeval force, moving or in repose.
That’s Yannis Ritsos, the Greek poet, channeling Heraclitus.
Idyllic afternoon among idols, taken by an idle eye among monuments.
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Hard to date, only can say it was after Back to the Future invention of the skateboard. Fashion is missing from the la natural sculptures so the fashionistas can't really date the skaters since they are always fringe alt mode de la rue.