Photographic chit-chat
Saturday 2013-01-26 :
The end of January; the pits of winter. The merriness of the Christmas holiday has long gone.
Tough time for the proponents of global warming : it has been -20°C outside for ten days; even less at night! The cold bites at the nape of the neck, the snow resists each step. So inhospitable a season that even the day goes to sleep early.
Work has resumed, with no holiday in sight before Easter. I would slip into gloom . . . were it not for this godsend that instills warmth and sunlight into my days.
Between Christmas and New Year, I toured the used book stores mentioned in these pages before, looking for beaux livres on photography, hoping for interesting new arrivals or old items. But nothing worthy of interest : mostly the same books, unsold since my last visit, many months before. Decidedly, shopkeepers get carried away by optimism : too expensive and devoid of any real worth, these books age poorly and clutter the shelves, unable to seduce the reader.
But, oh bliss!, I found among them a book I did not even know the existence of : a collection of letters from Robert Doisneau to Maurice Baquet, written in the '60s. Letters filled with the comradeship and fondness of old friends that distance and work separate, but mischievousness and humour still unite. A booklet of barely one hundred pages, on velvety semi-mat paper, smooth to the eye and to the touch, flawless in the rendering of photographs. Materially pleasant, illustrated with witty pictures the friends made together, in America as well as Europe, many of them staging Baquet and his ubiquitous cello.
Just what it takes to sprinkle on this season some of the gaiety it so dearly needs. A book with such a timely title : I am still waiting for Spring to arrive (J'attends toujours le printemps).
Diary archives :
- July through December 2012;
- January through June 2012;
- July through December 2011;
- January through June 2011;
- July through December 2010;
- January through June 2010;
- July through December 2009;
- January through June 2009;
- July through December 2008;
- January through June 2008;
- July through December 2007;
- February through June 2007.