Another Paris
Publisher
:
Attila
Parution date
:
2009
EAN
:
9782917084113
Number of pages
:
342
Description
Gray but glittering. Filled with the romance and glory of its museums and parks, wide boulevards and narrow streets, music and theater, restaurants and markets. That is the modern Paris we know and love. But when Jean-Paul Clébert moved to Paris in 1942 to participate in the French Resistance movement, he found a city that was still provincial, unregulated, and disorganized. His Paris was Another Paris.
Jean-Paul Clébert experienced the underbelly of post-occupation Paris as he walked the streets of the outer quarters and dug deep into the psyche of the newly liberated city. He was a witness to its social and political reawakening. By 1952, Clébert had written a fascinating chronicle of the city he found and saw evolve . . . a period in the life of a man and his city, frozen in time: Another Paris.
Clébert’s view of Paris was informed not only by the lionized intellectuals such as writer Henry Miller and photographer Robert Doisneau but also—and even more so—by the marginalized population of the scorned outer arrondissements. As Paris recreated itself after World War II, Clébert joined with those who lived beneath the wealthy and bourgeois façades. He embraced the areas of the city that had not been restored, areas rejected by most of society but filled with a different sort of life—a life less guarded and perhaps more vibrant. He lived with the vagabonds, the prostitutes, the gypsies, and the Jews who suffered the effects of constant poverty, hunger, and filth. Clébert’s search into the clandestine corners of Paris led to his ultimate intimacy with the miserable and impoverished and leaves his readers with a Baudelairian perspective on the city. In Another Paris, the reader can walk with Clébert though a Paris drawn from his immersion in the city’s darker streets, guided by the period photographs of Patrice Molinard.
Author
Jean-Paul Clébert : Jean-Paul Clébert was born in 1926 in Provence. Besides Paris Insolite, Clébert has written a number of books that have been translated into numerous languages, including The Blockhouse (Avon, 1960), The Gypsies (Penguin, 1974), and The Paris I Love (Sun Paris, 1966). Patrice Molinard, known for his photography of the French landscape, took all 115 photographs for this edition of Paris Insolite in 1954.
Patrice Molinard : Patrice Molinard, known for his photography of the French landscape, took all 115 photographs for this edition of Paris Insolite in 1954.
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