Theaters of rue de la Gaîté

Marquee, rue de la Gaîté, Paris, April 2010.


Theatre Rive Gauche, rue de la Gaîté, Paris, April 2010.



In Montparnasse, off rue de Maine, you will find a narrow alley lined with theaters that date back to the cabarets and music halls of 19th century Paris. The place is called rue de la Gaîté, the street of gaiety.

I found this street by chance during an early morning stroll after having breakfast at the public market. I knew nothing of its history, but was captivated by the marquees and the fire engine red facade of Comédie-Italienne, the last remaining theater in France that stages plays written exclusively by Italians.

While I took pictures of the marquee painting by Clayette above the Theatre Rive Gauche, an old lady watched me with amusement and explained its history to me -- in French -- saying it was a copy, but a good one (if I understood her correctly).

I realized later on, with the aid of Google, that I’d been walking along the street that was the heart of bohemian Paris, the Paris of Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, Doisneau and Brassai, the Paris I've romanticized in my mind for so long. On rue de la Gaîté, in its cafes and music hall stages, the likes of Josephine Baker, Kiki (Man Ray's muse), Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco and Jacques Brel entertained writers, artists and intellectuals who came to Paris from around the world to live la vie bohème.

That evening, I returned to rue de la Gaîté to toast my sister's birthday. We sat outdoors at a cafe with multicolored seats, talked about our loved ones, and soaked ourselves in a most perfect April evening.

Europeans

Pause near Ponte Vecchio, Florence, April 2010.


Montparnasse, Paris, April 2010.


Florence, Italy, April 2010.

Holiday in New York

Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NYC, November 2009.


Rockefeller Center, NYC, November 2009.

On the taxi ride to JFK Airport for our flight home to San Francisco, our Chinese driver was listening to Luis Miguel sing Bésame Mucho as we drove through Harlem, and at that moment, I started to miss New York before I even left it.

Spending Thanksgiving week in New York was my daughter's idea. She wanted to see the steps of the Met (the Gossip Girl hangout) and the many landmarks she has seen only in movies. As for me, I wanted to be a tourist in the city that was my home for five years.

Soak it up like tourists we did: the illuminated red steps of Times Square; the giant balloons of Macy's Thanksgiving parade; Jude Law, riveting in Hamlet; the prodigious dancer David Alvarez in Billy Elliot; a West Side Story restaged for a politically correct generation; Robert Frank's The Americans at the Met; autumn foliage in Central Park; bargain shopping on Canal Street.

In Central Park Zoo, the eerie green glow of a tropical rain forest pavilion served as the perfect backdrop for portrait-taking. It reminded me of the mismatched dreamscape of the Mona Lisa, but in the actual portraits appeared more akin to the Sleepy Hollow of Tim Burton, whose work was being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (which we sadly missed).

Above all, the trip was about spending an entire week in a city I love with the people I love most. I can't wait to return next year in time for Christmas, under the Star of 57th Street!

Taken today

Untitled, Embarcadero BART Station, San Francisco, October 2009.

My daughter's face

Zoe, San Francisco, April 2008.



I've been photographing my daughter, Zoe, since she was three or four. She has become accustomed to the intrusion of my camera when she awakes, walks, eats. She obliges me with her camera face and she has learned how to catch her light. In my company, she knows that a barren wall or a luminous shaft of light would mean having to stand against it, be blinded by the light, or appear silly to passers by; but she indulges me.

In the process of being model and muse, she has picked up the camera herself, learning to shoot with it manually before discovering that she didn't have to. She also learned about Iturbide and Balthus, Björk and Almodovar, the people we have made homages to; exposure, aperture priority, rule of thirds, diagonals. She likes her pictures dark and is a killer at Photoshop. When she photographs, as she did for her school yearbook, she is fearless and demanding.

I love my daughter's face. Her downward gaze telegraphs sadness unknowable for her age. Her grace and poise preceded her dance training: calm and stillness before the lens inhabit her naturally; hers is a face that changes its essence with the slightest movement of the eyes or the angle of the chin. She has maturity beyond her years that she projects for my benefit. As easily as she puts on "the look," she would remove it, like a mask, the moment I say "all done," and she is a child again.

She is fast approaching her teens, and as I contemplate the gift that she has given my work and the beauty she has lent to images that I shall treasure always, I give her my own: from William Butler Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter." I know she will read this and hope that she fathoms its meaning. It is my own wish for this beautiful child of mine.

"May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend."