Napoleon Street
Saturday, October 25, 2008.
Yesterday evening In Napoleon Street, we enjoyed a meal at Van's Café and shared a glass of Three Little Pigs wine to celebrate the thirty-third anniversary of the Saturday night we met in London. And this afternoon, Joelle took me to see a movie about the painter Caravaggio. The fruit in bowls on Caravaggio's dining tables were spotted and spoiled. Pilgrims' feet were dirty and Caravaggio's Madonnas wore the likeness of prostitutes. Despite the gritty naturalism, his paintings are theatrical with the chiaroscuro and drama of a flat screen TV. Caravaggio's realism and fusion of the sacred and the profane had critics. Nevertheless, his paintings created audiences and enjoyed the patronage of the counter-reformation Catholic Church. In three weeks we will be a day from Rome and in 5 weeks we will be in London. The last time I visited Rome was July 1975.

Perth International Airport
Saturday, November 15.

Remi drops us off at Perth International Airport. It takes almost an hour to check in. The 20-kilo luggage limit is strictly observed. I stand in a slow queue to get cash. The Thomas Cook agent is talkative and keen to know everyone's travel plans. Her hair is styled in black bouncy ringlets, the type worn for special occasions. Perhaps after work she is going to a wedding, a ball or a 21st birthday party. I don't ask. I just want euro and some pounds sterling and the plane is boarding. My cabin luggage is stuffed with telephone book sized volumes of down loaded notes on Renaissance art, old churches and museum floor plans. Hand luggage is being weighed and surely I'm over the limit, but the officials are preoccupied with a non-compliant passenger so I sneak through. The plane takes off into the sea breeze, banks right over Canning Bridge, straightens over Cottesloe Beach, then heads north along the coast before entering cloud. Just past 6pm we're out of the cloud. At 6.40pm we're flying over Shark Bay. The Western Australian coast drifts away. Way out over the Indian Ocean is a smoggy, tobacco yellow haze. Approaching the coast of Java now and the sky is completely dark.

Typically I would pack the two Nikons and lots of black and white film. But this time I've packed a borrowed digital SLR camera and two anything can happen plastic Holgas. I need to travel light and with nothing in particular to photograph other than sculptures, I shan't need the Nikons and the Holgas' unpredictability may produce something and it's time I tried a digital camera. But I will miss the black-bodied Nikon. It's my night camera and in Sicily's dark Easter streets it saw what I saw. Some of Caravaggio's last paintings were commissioned and executed in Sicily.

Watch Me Disappear

"But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus"; wrote Saul Bellow in the 1953 novel, The Adventures of Augie March. I saw Melbourne band Augie March at a concert at The Regal Theatre a few weeks ago. I went with Alix. An Augie March guitar player was introduced as the one "in the Euro trash cardigan." The concert was wonderful and as we left the theatre Alix bought the latest CD, Watch Me Disappear. Augie March's music is difficult to label, a bit folksy, a bit rocky, a bit surreal, a bit Australiana.

Folk and Country music express longing / yearning.
Pop infatuation.
Swing and Rock n Roll is about seduction.
Blues is about frustration and the blues.
Heavy Rock / Rap is about aggression.
Jazz as in John Coltrane, dissolution.
Classical is about a lot of things but the best classical music is like the best jazz music.

Along with Augie March, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Keith Jarrett and ACDC I've packed classical music. Classical music was created when diseases were numerous, mysterious and deadly and misfortune rife. Classical music is least convincing when it's buoyant and triumphant and accompanying the work of the golden tipped arrows of Eros. It's most convincing when it accompanies the work of the lock of hair cutting sword of Thanatos. Mozart's and Faure's requiems and Caravaggio's San Luigi dei Francesi and Santa Maria del Popolo will go well together. As a six year old Caravaggio lost an uncle, a grandfather and a father to The Plaque of 1576.

The Leonardo Express
Day 1 November 16 (Domenica)

Rome's, Fiumicino Airport's self-service rail ticket machine accepts some euro notes and credit cards and spits out others. At 5.30am there are no staff around or shops open. Red-eyed travellers are frustrated. An Italian from Sydney advocates riding the Leonardo Express for free. Joelle perseveres and we have our tickets, one for the Sydney revolutionary and two for us. We leave for Stazione Termini on the 6.36.

What centre Hotel Center occupies is a mystery as it's off our Streetwise Rome map. We walk into the stabbing, rising sun of Via Giovanni Giolatti. Our luggage makes the din of a fair ground chocolate wheel as plastic wheels clicker across the steel grids in the pavement. Hot air rises. Homeless people keeping warm stir. Below the grid is one of Rome's underground railways. Rome will not be easy to get around. It has only two underground rail lines. Linea A and Linea B. Construction of Linea C is slow as ruined Rome gets in the way.

The Most Beautiful Church in Rome

7.30am. The room isn't ready. We are given a map and requested to come back "after lunch". Reception advises Linea A would take us to the Vatican and I think I hear the number 17 bus will take us to the Colosseum and The Forum. Instead we set off on foot for tree lined Viale Manzoni; it made the promise of interesting shops to Joelle as we passed by. The further we walk the shabbier Viale Manzoni becomes.
The graffiti and tattered street posters haven't been read for some time and tree roots lift the pavement. I see the urban landscapes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. At the corner of Viale Manzoni and Via Emanuelle some early morning Romans arrange themselves into a Garry Winogrand street photograph. An elderly man waking from a nightmare rambles by. A woman dressed in black purposively chooses flowers from a street store. A grey nun steps from a doorway. A man talks to dogs. We walk on and a column rises supporting Santa Maria. A reliquary in Santa Maria Maggiore preserves a fragment of Christ's manger.

At Piazza della Repubblicca is Michelangelo's Santa Maria degli Angeli. The light inside is late afternoon diffused summer haze. On Via XX Septembre, Santa Vittoria's door opens onto a Mass. I can't see Bernini's Saint Theresa. A robed man reads from a pulpit. Behind him are seated stern faced robed men. Saint Theresa waits for another day. A small poster fly-pasted on the temporary wall of a construction site announces a recital of Mozart's Requiem. It's tonight. Jet lagged we neglect to note the venue and walk back to Hotel Center. I sleep until 4.30pm. When I wake it's nearly dark. Joelle has been up for some time.

We search for the Mozart poster without luck. An obliging tourist office worker googles and finds the concert. At 6.30pm we are seated in the back row of San Paolo entro le mura (Saint Paul's within the walls). After a brief introduction the Requiem begins. A soprano's voice is almost as beautiful as our CD. We can't believe our luck. I'm noticing the art behind the orchestra. The entire wall is a mosaic by Burne-Jones. Saint Paul within the walls is the most beautiful church in Rome.

The Deposition from the Cross
Day 2 November 17 (Lunedi)

The first Vatican Museum art object we encounter is a huge bust of pagan Rome's supreme god, Jupiter. He has the hair of a 70s rock star. Up the stairs and out onto a landing and hovering above the trees, is the dome of Saint Peter's. The guidebook is right, it's "breathtaking". Domes represent the engorged breasts of Mother Earth, it's not the cross that maps Christendom, it's breasts.

Caravaggio's The Deposition from the Cross is in room XII. It looks like a photograph of a scene from a play. John and Nicodemus lower Christ's body onto a slab of polystyrene like stone. Behind John and Nicodemus is a tableau of the Madonna and the two Maries then a void of dark brown and black. The viewer is not amongst the theatres' audience. Instead the viewer of the painting is in the wings, where a stagehand or nervous opening night director might stand, out of sight. Unexpectedly, Nicodemus looks at the viewer. He's losing his grip on Christ's legs and he's forgotten his lines. The foreshortened perspective of Caravaggio's Deposition places the viewer at the distance of the disengaged spectator like the photographer looking through a zoom lens. Voyeuristically the audience watches transfixed by Nicodemus' moment of panic.

A band of pilgrims gather determinedly at the steps of Saint Peter's, some hope for a cure. We're obliged to wait while the singing pilgrims file through the massive doors. Michelangelo's Pieta is behind glass protected from any more hammer blows. Michelangelo's slender Jesus doesn't have the muscular carpenter's body of the Jesus of Caravaggio's Deposition. We escape Saint Peter's smothering crowds and officials and walk down Via della Constituzione to Umberto Bridge. There is much about Rome that is like Paris with the river and bridges but it's also so different. Paris is elegant and sophisticated, whereas Rome is earthy and less tidy, with ancient columns strewn all over like dinosaur bones. The past of Paris has been sanitised, whereas Rome's festering origins dislodge Viale Manzoni's pavement and obstruct underground rail construction as Pagan Rome threatens to burst out.
Madonna di Loreto (Sant'Agostino)

A few street corners from Piazza Vavorona is Sant'Agostino. This will be the first time we see a Caravaggio painting in the church for which it was commissioned. Rome's smaller 15th century churches are so beautiful. Bare footed the Madonna di Loreto stands in the doorway of a Roman house with its travertine mouldings. The doorway looks like stage scenery. On a charcoal wall are painted sketchy white lines, testament to the crumbling decay of a poor district. Awkwardly, the Madonna displays a naked and weighty Jesus for two kneeling and raggedy pilgrims. Pilgrims wore no shoes and so feet are soiled. The Madonna bears the same features as the women of Burne-Jones. Dark hair, a Greek sculpture profile, a strong neck, a clearly defined eyebrow that looks like it meets the other, a pronounced and rounded jaw and chin, and Elvis Presley's mouth. The Madonna exhausted is about to swoon.

Calling of Saint Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesci)

In nearby San Luigi dei Francesci, a group of men, some wearing fancy plumed hats and flashy striped blouses like a jockey's, sit around a table gambling, or perhaps Matthew is collecting tax. One man is hunched over counting money. The poses adopted by the two young plumed hat - wearing men are of a studied and disinterested nonchalance. In contrast, two standing and deadly earnest men, dressed in biblical clothes address the group. One is Jesus the other Peter. They point at an incredulous Matthew. A beam of light shines into the seated men's eyes. Jesus and Peter are shadowy and mysterious silhouettes. Matthew's days of hanging around with fancy young men are over.
Saint Matthew and the Angel (San Luigi dei Francesci)

The viewer of Saint Matthew and the Angel is seated in the front row of a theatre and looking up at the stage. A hovering angel dictates the gospel to Saint Matthew beginning with Christ's genealogy. Caravaggio's angels are precocious adolescents. They aren't the angels of Yahweh's Old Testament who destroyed civilisations with swords of mass destruction. As Saint Matthew transcribes his gospel the stool he leans on has one leg tottering over the edge of the stage. He will surely topple off. Caravaggio's Saint Matthew is about to tumble onto someone's lap sitting in the front row?

Martyrdom of Saint Matthew (San Luigi dei Francesci)

Caravaggio's commission requested Saint Matthew murdered celebrating Mass in a temple like setting. Though Caravaggio's Martyrdom resembles more a brawl in a sauna with three of the bodies in the busy scene naked except for mini robes tied around waists. One of the semi naked bodies, a youth wearing a headband, is the sword wielding assassin. Saint Matthew has been stabbed at least once. The on-lookers' faces witnessing the violence are shocked, except for one at the very back of the scene; the face of Caravaggio. While there is anguish on Caravaggio's face there is also resignation. Caravaggio is not shocked by the murder of Saint Matthew. Donna says the head banded assassin is not an Ethiopian soldier. He is a Caravaggio angel.

Day 3 November 18 (Martedi)

We follow Viale Manzoni and Via Labicana to The Colosseum and the Palatine Museum. In the Palatine Museum is a sculpture of Dionysus. There are traces of red in the long hair that snakes over his shoulders. What a pity his head has been removed. The face of Friedrich Nietzsche's anti Christ is kept a secret. Nietzsche believed that if Beethoven's Hymn of Joy could be turned into a painting it would provide a vision of the Dionysian. Rites with ecstatic and intoxicated initiates, tearing apart and devouring live animals, is not easy to reconcile with Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Perhaps an ACDC or Led Zeppelin concert or John Coltrane's Live in Seattle would be Dionysian rather than Beethoven.

We wander around The Forum imagining another Rome, visit Piazza Venezzia and walk to Hotel Center for a rest.

It's 4pm and we arrive at Santa Vittoria. Opening the door there is no Mass. In a Capella on the left, is Bernini's larger than life size Ecstasy of Saint Theresa. An angel with a thrusting spear smiles at the reclining and ecstatic saint. Saint Theresa's foot is the size of a basketballer's.

The Conversion of Saint Paul and Crucifixion of Saint Peter
(Santa Maria del Popolo)

Santa Maria del Popolo at the northern end of Piazza di Popolo houses Caravaggio's Conversion of Saint Paul and Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Both paintings have only a few pictorial elements but the sense of space in both is claustrophobic. A farm horse steps warily in the congestion of Saint Paul's conversion and an executioner has to stoop to fit within the frame of Saint Peter's crucifixion. The crucifixion scene is lit by one light source whereas the conversion scene uses more complex lighting. Strong but diffuse light comes from the right of the conversion frame lighting evenly the flank of the horse yet is well forward and misses the right, out-stretched arm of Saint Paul. The light directly above Saint Paul accords with The Living Bible's account of the scene in Acts 9:3 "a brilliant light from heaven spotted down upon him!" However, Caravaggio's spotlight on Saint Paul is not brilliant, but more strong, diffused stage lighting, whereas the biblical light was so bright that Paul was blinded for three days. Caravaggio's differing lighting directions and strengths, and sufficient fill light to illuminate shadows, produces a hyper real illusion of modelling and form. Portrait photographers know Caravaggio's use of sidelight, and overhead butterfly light, as Rembrandt lighting. And the backgrounds of both paintings are like the rolls of paper found in the photographer's studio that hang behind the subjects then curve and run along the floor towards the camera. With use, the paper buckles and ripples. Rather than paper, Caravaggio used fabric. You can see the folds. The sumptuous lighting reveals the nails that pin Saint Peter's feet aren't driven far enough into the cross to be secured. And Saint Peter looks anxiously at his nailed left hand. There is no blood! Nor do his feet bleed. Is he already dead? Is this a dream? Or just a rehearsal?

The Devil's District
Day 4 November 19 (Mercoledi)

Our last day in Rome and so much to see.
We arrive at Metro Barberini and find the Trevi Fountain. Such a big monument for such a small space. Along Via Veneto is Bernini's seashell drinking fountain with the bees. The crypt of Santa Maria della Concesie is crammed with the bones of 4000 Capuchin monks. Intact skeletons in robes lie in state. Capuchin monks weren't very tall. The gardens of Villa Borghese are expansive and beautiful. As we have no reservation we will have to return in the afternoon to visit the Galleria Borghese and see the seven Caravaggio paintings. We lunch at the Spanish Steps. We walk to The Pantheon. What a primal place. There is power here. We cross the Tiber on Ponte Sisto, Rome's first bridge. We walk through Travestere the devil's district. I'm transported to Il Capo in Palermo. Joelle feels uneasy in Travestere. Perhaps in summer and overgrown with vines it is more like the guidebook. But Santa Maria di Travestere is beautiful. We are spent and too tired to return to Galleria Borghese. Rome's taxis are affordable so from Ponte Garibaldi we taxi to Hotel Center and stay in for the night with convenience store food.

PART 2

Three Times Now
Day 5 November 20 (Giovedi)

Flat, cleared farmland, interrupted by wooded hills, is framed in the train window. A flock of Burne-Jones, Saint Paul's between the walls sheep pass by. Now a forest brushed with earth brown, khaki greens and apple yellows. Winter is coming. Heading north it will get colder. The colours blend together like watercolour. The skies are soft and the clouds have no edges. I want to jump off the train and stay here. Passing through tunnels ears start popping, we must be climbing.

We change trains at Florence. Siena is only 40 kilometres away but the train will travel via Empoli and take 1 hour and 40 minutes. But the gentle pace is restful and suits the countryside. Locals alight and board here and there, none in much of a hurry. I wonder what is on their minds? What they will be doing today? An affectionate couple sit opposite. The older man asks how long the train will take. He expresses surprise. They have no luggage.

Siena's store windows are stacked with panforte. Christmas is coming.

Sitting on the terrace of Bar Il Palio, the tension leaves our bodies and rolls down the slope of Piazza Del Campo towards Palazzo Publicca. Rome was a big town and not easy to get around. Some churches were so difficult to find and we walked and walked and walked. Here in Siena, our hotel is just 50 metres away in Piazza Indipendenza, and the furtherest we will walk will be to the Laundromat. A pigeon lands on a nearby table. It has no feet. Bar Il Palio plays early Beatles.

It was July 2,1975. We arrived early to take the place on the barricade closest to the entrance of Palazzo Pubblico. We witnessed the moment after the blessing when the horses clattered and clopped through the Town Hall's doors. A young rider had the face of a Paul Strand portrait. It was the last day of the Palio and the contrada of Istrice would soon have victory. The prize, a Madonna adorned banner. I've been to Siena three times now. That first time without a camera. The second time in 1984 with a camera that square pictured a man in a suit, leaning on a bollard in the middle of a nearby street and now this third time. I would be happy with a good suit photograph. Dorothea Lange and August Sander both made wonderful suit photographs. Imagine a room with a view of Piazza Del Campo. Siena is so beautiful. Rust brown stone, flashes of light and glimpses of the eternal. In 1348 The Black Death took half of Siena's people. Ghosts are everywhere.

Ristorante Spaghetteria da Renzo's (14, via Delle Terme) minestrone soup is delicious. The cook's face says she has spent a lifetime in the fields.

Chicago Light
Day 6 November 21 (Venerdi)

At 8am the sun finds the occasional wall in Banchi Di Sotto while most are in deep shadow. The late November sun is low in the sky all day, morning, mid day and afternoon. I think of Harry Callahan's Chicago light but the streets here are too narrow for sunbeams to penetrate. I haven't seen Siena in this kind of light before. The Holgas won't cope. I need my Rolleiflex.

After 16th century, Renaissance paintings of torture, martyrdom and melodrama, I'm enjoying the stillness of 14th century painting. In Museo dell' Opera del Duoma, Duccio Di Buoninsegna's Madonna of The Maesta, sits enthroned surrounded by saints and angels on panels 5 metres wide. Terre Verte (Green Earth), the Medieval and early Renaissance under painting colour for human flesh is unsettling. The use of green enhances the warmth of the over painted red Cinabrese skin colour but when I see green flesh I see putrescence. Duccio's, The Maesta was painted for Siena's Cathedral in 1311, 7 years before his death and 37 years before the arrival of The Black Death

Room 406
Day 8 November 22 (Sabato)

We leave Siena on the 8.47 for Florence.

A woman shakes a rug over a balcony.

On the horizon is a snow-capped mountain.

We walk to 6 via Medici and are given the key to room 406. What a hotel room! Hotel Medici must be a 2 star hotel. There is room to walk around the bed and there is a writing desk. The bathroom is small but not as small as in Rome and Siena where you could shower while sitting on the toilet. We meet Ivan in the street near the Duomo; he's a little grey now. He travelled to Florence from Bern with Regina, "a work colleague". It's good to be together again. It's been 8 years. We find a bar that sells expensive beer. Ivan asks what the photo project is about. It's about The End of Everything I say.

The Sacrifice of Isaac
Day 7 November 23 (Domenica)

The Uffizi's enigmatic blonde gazing at the viewer, in Botticelli's Primavera, I think her name is Flora, looks like Cate Blanchett. A Wikepedia down load claims that Renaissance blondes bleached their hair in urine.

Bob Dylan sings;

"Ah God said to Abraham kill me a son
Abe said man you must be putting me on
God said no, Abe said what
God said you can do what you want Abe
But the next time you see me comin' you better run
Well Abe said where do you want this killing done
God said around Highway 61"

When I first heard Bob Dylan's 1965 Highway 61 Revisited, it was a revelation, a motorcycle ride of harmonicas and electric guitars and surreal images and dream narratives and biblical visions. The lyrics didn't always make sense. What made sense was the spellbinding logic of rhyme and rhythm. It was poetry with a beat, played by a band flying somewhere I'd never been before. On Highway 61, Dylan's transformation, that began with Bringing It All Back Home, from the folk singing, freight train riding Oakie, to Rock n Roll star; was made complete.

The colours of Caravaggio's The Sacrifice of Isaac are more sombre than the other paintings I've seen. Perhaps the others were cleaned, or perhaps it's the dim lighting in the room, or perhaps that's how it was painted. Sombre. It's a sombre business, God ordering a father to kill his son. This painting has a background. The hilly terrain, Cyprus trees, chateau and other buildings, say Rome rather than the desert of Canaan. (Although it looks like the painted background of a 19th century photographer's studio.) An angel grips Abraham's knife wielding wrist, and points to the surrogate sacrificial ram. Isaac's eyes confused and terrified, plead to the viewer. What a powerful rendering of terror. The viewer can do nothing. The eyes of the ram don't leave the finger-pointing angel.

On the other side of the Arno is Cappella Brancacci and Masaccio's beautiful frescoes. Masaccio commences the Brancacci Chapel frescoes in 1427. In 1428 Masaccio leaves for Rome and soon after dies, at the age of 26, leaving the frescoes unfinished. In 1484, 9 years after the birth of Michelangelo, Filippino Lippi completes the Brancacci frescoes. Italian art is still some time away from the Michelangelo revolution. Masaccio's work is known for its naturalism, yet his figures retain a medieval stiffness. They are made as if of painted wood that is slowly coming to life. They gesture like marionettes. I wait for them to move. The Church had used puppets controlled by strings for morality plays. Marionette means Mary Doll.

Masaccio's Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise, is Edvard Munch like says Ivan. Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Conscience and Yahweh is angry, as they now can discriminate good from evil without having to defer to him. If they eat from the Tree of Life, then they become immortal, as gods, so they are expelled. In my 1956 publication of the frescoes, Adam and Eve are depicted wearing stencilled fig leaves. The frescoes have since returned to their original portrayal and Adam has a penis and testicles. Masaccio paints no snake. The only other figure, is a sword-wielding angel dressed in red, ushering the striding couple from Paradise. Eve's face is grotesque in its grief. What a terrible consequence for humanity. What did she do that was so wrong?

A wine bar and pizzeria on Via De Cimatori beckons and invites us in for dinner. The Divina Comedia has a bohemian feel about it. I imagine poetry brewing here. A waitress wears a wild hairstyle. The food and wine is tasty and affordable. After dinner, Ivan and Regina will return to Bern on a night train and tomorrow we leave for Paris.

Hippopotamus
Day 8 November 24 (Lundi)

7am. It's raining. There's thunder.
We've been lucky. Everyday has been sunny but today it's raining.
7.45. The Duomo's bells are ringing, a cascading, tumbling, joyful sound as in Sicily when the bride and groom, showered in fertility rice, leave the church.
It's raining more heavily.
The weather is closing in. The mountains beyond the airport are faint now.
Approaching Zurich we fly through a cloud of steam coming from what looks like a nuclear reactor.
It's raining in Paris. People dressed for the cold are darting like a sky full of swallows in out of the traffic of Gare Du Nord. I'm too buggered to take out a camera. We're hungry. We eat at Hippopotamus.

Simone's Apartment
Day 9 November 25 (Mardi)

Galerie Laurent Strouk
8 bis, rue Jacques Callot
Exhibition: William Klein Contacts

William Klein's retreatment of his funky, carnival-esque, genre defining, 1950s street shots, and later work is surprising. He's made contact prints of some of his most well known pictures and then painted aggressively with bold, thick colour, around and over the images. The young gallery assistant asks if we know his work. "He is very important." She tells us that William Klein lives in Paris near the Jardin de Luxembourg. Klein must be 80 I guess. I give the young gallery assistant my website address. I wonder if she will look?

Gallerie Aittoures
2 rue des Beaux Arts

For sale are vintage prints by Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau. I prefer Doisneau's atmospheric portrait to Cartier-Bresson's carefully composed portrait. There are also photos of the Beatles, Rodin, Cezanne and Marilyn Monroe as a young, unrecognisable brunette. Imagine if you lived in Paris and were after a special gift for a special friend. What could be better than one of these photographs?

Galerie Camera Obscura
268 Boulevarde Raspail
Exhibition: Sarah Moon 12345

Sarah Moon's smudged, New York Photo Secession styled vamps and prints are engaging, while lacking the emotional darkness and melancholy of Stieglitz's fin de siecle Camera Work. Moon pictures an elephant in a frame of deep black. The photograph is very strong. It does look like a 19th century photo. An elephant lost in Galerie Camera Obscura.

Foundation H-C-B (Henri Cartier-Bresson)
2 Impasse Lebois
Exhibition: Henri Cartier-Bresson Walker Evans Photographier L'Amerique 1929 – 1947

Walking to the H-C-B Foundation, we follow the wall of Cimetiere du Montparnasse and I recall Prue's story. When Jean Paul Sartre died; Simone De Beauvoir leased an apartment opposite the cemetery, so as to be near him. There's the plaque. She lived there. Simone and Jean Paul's shared grave is just behind the wall.

Walker Evans' style is gothic - flat and front on. His photographs of America's joyless 1930s, pictured places and people, not dissimilar to the Western Australia where I grew up in the 1950s. Perhaps that's why I find his pictures engaging. Some of Walker's best pictures are in this exhibition.

A young Walker Evans travels to Paris to become a writer. Writing doesn't work out so he stays with photography. "If it had not been for the challenge of the work of Walker Evans I don't think I would have remained a photographer." Wrote Cartier-Bresson. H.C.B.'s American photos are like Walker Evans' pictures.

Day 10 November 26 (Mercredi)

Galeries nationale du Grand Palais
Exhibition: Emil Nolde 1867 – 1956

With cubes of colour and brushes and boxes of pencils, students sample Emil Nolde. I'm aware of Nolde's work and the importance of the period, but I don't know his art that well. Nolde's mid 1890s paintings of fantastic mountain giants would be apt illustrations for the imaginative worlds of children's books. His early paintings are in the styles of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Lautrec. The beautiful Couple sur la plage (1903), is reminiscent of Seurat. Then from the 1912, Enfant et grand oiseau, the work is the expressionist style for which Nolde is known. The 9 panelled, over 5 metres wide, "La Vie du Christ" occupies one room. Nolde used green underpainting for human skin just as the Medieval and early Renaissance painters. A movie is screened in the museum. Joseph Goebbels enters the 1937, Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich. Nolde was forbidden to paint by the Nazis. Friend, Paul Klee said, Nolde was a daemon. The creature floating in the sky of Nolde's Avant le lever du soleil (Before the sunrise), really is a daemon.

We spend the afternoon amongst Monet's water lillies and haystacks at Musee Marmottan Monet. Joelle buys a book on Impressionist Berthe Morisot. We enjoy the last of the daylight on Rue Rivoli.

The Flight To Egypt
Day 11 November 27 (Jeudi)

At Gare de L'Est, waiting for the Nancy train, I sit next to a Holocaust deportation memorial and listen to ACDC's Black Ice to keep my feet warm.

11am. I'm breathing out fog.
It's going to be freezing in the east. It was minus 6 degrees last night.
My feet and fingers are numb.
A café proprietor pours a glass of boiling water over his tiles. Steam rises. He mops briskly.
The temperature is dropping. I stand and move my legs.
There's Joelle.

Faure's Requiem will take us into the mists of the East.

The sun, low on the horizon, breaks through and cuts like a laser from one side of the carriage to the other. Sitting opposite, a devoted Joseph, sporting a shaved head, gold ear ring and three piece light grey business suit, cradles baby Jesus in his arms as if the baby is made of wafer thin porcelain. Mary sleeps.
We arrive, Nancy is full of sunshine. A taxi with two chatty drivers, delivers us to Lay St Christophe and Jacqueline's. Joelle was back last year with Nanou to visit her Mother. I haven't seen Jacqueline for 3 years.

Lay St. Christophe
Day 12 November 28 (Vendredi)

Lay St. Christophe's winter sun rises behind the southeast corner of the patio window and sets behind the southwest corner of the patio window. Never rising high in the sky. When I first arrived in England from Western Australia, the early April sun never rose high in the sky.

The Annunciation
Day 13 November 29 (Samedi)

Jacqueline has lost a pearl earring. It was Raymonde's, Guy's mother.

Caravaggio's The Annunciation, is in gallery 8, of Nancy's Musee des Beaux - Arts.
Mary's head is bowed . . . an angel, face hidden in the dark canvas, points tentatively towards her. The angel wrapped sensually in cloth from the best of shops is Baroque . . . silent Mary in profile is Gothic. Medieval faith had Mary impregnated by a beam of light. Her solitude fills the room.

Day 14 November 30 (Dimanche)

At breakfast the pearl earring is found in the sugar bowl . . .

Benoit and family are arriving soon. We are going together for Sunday lunch.

I'm typing this in Guy's office. Guy was a historian and Jacqueline has slowly been disposing of his books. Now most are gone, with the shelves that aren't empty, occasioned with left over monographs, nick-knacks and sundry other things. I notice a photo on top of a pile. It's quirky, the camera has made the young woman pictured an amputee. She has only one arm. Guy was good with a camera. The Cabourdin family album photos are like editorial pictures from Paris Match. This photo doesn't have his sense of style, but it is interesting. Joelle had made the photograph of a school friend.

Benoit, Catherine, Mathieu and Melanie arrive. Lunch is at L'Auberge de Courcelles.

Day 15 December 1 (Lundi)

I type

Day 16 December 2 (Mardi)

I type

A Black Angel
Day 17 December 3 (Mercredi)

Catherine arrives to drive us to Nancy railway station. Jacqueline waves goodbye from the kitchen window.

10.28 The train leaves.
10.48 Blobs of snow are scattered like rocks in a field.
The TGV is picking up speed.
I would rather be sitting so that we can see where we are going rather than where we have been.
The TGV is now hurtling along. I'm feeling sick.
Crows in the sky.
Haystacks.
Fields and village rooftops flaked lightly with snow.
All flash past.
I play Neil Young's, Tonight's the Night.

I'm climbin' this ladder
My head in the clouds
I hope that it matters
I'm havin' my doubts

I'm singin' this borrowed tune
I took from The Rolling Stones
Alone in this empty room
Too wasted to write my own

I first heard Tonight's the Night, on a small cassette player that sat on a bedside table in Joelle's room in Richmond. I don't recall hearing Borrowed Tune. It's such a good song, just a harmonica, piano, and that voice.

A black angel rests in a field. His wings are heavy.
A grove of bare trees is skeletal, like veins in a dried leaf.
All green is a field of Christmas trees.
There's a young deer.
11.47 graffiti – industry – suburbs – Paris – it's exactly 12.
We lunch at Foodissimo
4.13 Eurostar is leaving.
5.40 We enter the Channel Tunnel.
6.11 We are in England.
6.48 Paris time, Eurostar comes to a halt. I turn off the iPod and The Stones' Little Red Rooster. We are in London.

PART 3

Arriving at St. Pancras Railway Station at 6 is a mistake. The taxi crawls through the traffic to Exhibition Road. We should have taken the tube. The meter clicks over 20 quid and we're not at Alistair's yet. Alistair hears the wheels of our luggage skipping over the mews' cobblestones and opens his door with a smile. After home made pizza it's off to Onslow Gardens and the Anglesea Arms, the pub where Bruce Reynolds plotted The Great Train Robbery.

The Greyhound
Day 18 December 4 (Thursday)

Hammersmith is 4 Piccadilly Line tube stops from South Kensington. We're spending our first morning in London revisiting Fulham. The Hammersmith Odeon must be nearby, but I can't see where. It's now called the Hammersmith Apollo. Bruce Springsteen played there. I remember the Born to Run posters along Fulham Palace Road. Joelle invited me to the Odeon for "A Hairy Ape" concert. When we arrived, it was a Uriah Heap concert. They were awful. When we met, Joelle's English was limited and I spoke no French. Misunderstandings were frequent. When I invited Joelle over for tea, I should have said dinner. She arrived having already eaten.

There's the Fulham Palace Road exit. We begin the walk to Putney Bridge. On the way we shall find the Greyhound Pub, where we met, and after Finlay Street, where I had lived. A biting wind whips at us and a fierce blinding sun stabs our eyes. The sun and the wind are turning us back to Hammersmith. Our arrival has provoked forces that should not be disturbed. Identities transform. Howling from the south, the wind is not Notus, but devouring, kidnapping, snakes for feet, the cold of winter, North Wind, Boreus. And the four winged horses, that draw the chariot of sun god Helios; Pyrios, Aeos, Aethon and Phlegon, spit blazing darts of fire into our eyes. We walk into the midst of a cosmic battle. I imagine blindfolded Fortuna in Fulham Palace Road, with her ball and wheel that rolls and spins in any direction. And I feel the presence of Clotho, the Fate, the weaver of destinies. With her two sisters, she is a daughter of Night. Incantations are chanted, spells and counter spells cast. Zeus, still brooding over the Fates allowing Sarpedon's life being taken by the spear of Patroclus, hurls a lightning bolt at Clotho. The Battle of SW6 is swift. The vanquished sun and wind abate. Zeus, the storm gatherer, taking the form of an eagle, launches into the air, and flaps sulkily northeast towards Chelsea. Fortuna and Clotho, indifferent to their victory, make no carry on. The night that Joelle and I met at the Greyhound Pub would not be undone. The departure of a daughter and sister from family and home and France, would not be undone. Jacqueline waving goodbye, from the kitchen window, would not be undone. We continue the walk to Putney Bridge and Finlay Street. The Greyhound Pub is now The Southern Belle. We had walked this road many times, yet there are buildings we can't recall, even a cemetery. Those London, autumn and winter months of 1975 were such an intense time. They were the days of the end of everything.

Bishop's Park is as cheerless this morning as when in September, 1975 I shot the new Pentax Spotmatic's first roll of film. We leave Fulham walking along New Kings Road. It's a long way to Sloane Square. We catch the number 22 for Piccadilly Circus. On congested Kings Road, perched high on a restaurant's wall, are two large eagles and nearby two goddesses. They were there in 1975. I wonder which of the eagles is sulky Zeus?

Not finding a pub around Sloane Square we lunch at Starbucks which are everywhere. We Christmas shop for Remi and Alix, then from Sloane Square and a change at South Kensington; the Underground takes us to Piccadilly Circus. Piccadilly's Eros flashes the knowing smile of the angel thrusting the spear at Saint Teresa in Santa Vittoria in Rome. Now a short walk to Trafalgar Square and The National Gallery. In room 34 are the three Caravaggio paintings. Boy bitten by a lizard. Supper at Emmaus. Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist.

Supper at Emmaus (The National Gallery)

Supper at Emmaus is such a beautiful painting. A risen and chubby faced Christ, shares a meal with two raggedy disciples. Christ sits in the same Rembrandt lighting as the Conversion of Saint Paul. The moment pictured, is the instant the disciples recognise the transformed Jesus. In a few seconds, he will vanish. A French speaking tour guide points at the bowl of fruit, perched precariously by Caravaggio on the edge of the table about to spill onto the floor of room 34 of the National Gallery.

Salome with the head of Saint John the Baptist (The National Gallery)

John the Baptist's head is rendered with large, loose, rough brush strokes. The flesh transforms into waxy flakes of paint. Salome's face is painted smoothly, seamlessly, with no brush marks. Salome does not look at her prize, John's head. Instead she is distracted, and gazes out to the left of the frame towards the floor. Her expression is of annoyance and disdain. Perhaps incongruous, given the grotesque, severed head lumped onto the platter she clutches. It's as if the cat, has just coughed up a fresh fur ball onto her new carpet.

Saint Paul's
Day 19 December 5 (Friday)

I'm up early and on the Central Line to St. Paul's and then to The City. Saint Paul's is un-photographable. I can't get back far enough. There is much new development around St. Paul's. Alistair says that the last time London had been so prosperous, was during the Victorian era.

An underground violinist plays Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

I walk along The City's Threadneedle Street. The part demolished building I've come to photograph at 1 St. Mary's Axe, is completely demolished. Number 1 St. Mary's Axe, was known for be-headings. The financial district's streets are cold and hard.

I meet Joelle for lunch.

An underground guitarist plays Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven.

We spend the afternoon walking through the theatre district of Covent Garden. At nightfall, we walk under Waterloo Bridge, along the Victoria Embankment, across the river on the Jubilee Bridge, walk along The Thames Path past the stores selling freshly roasted food, walk by the giant Eye of London, over Westminster Bridge, along Whitehall, through the Horse Guards Parade, along The Mall, Haymarket, there's Piccadilly Circus, it's time to eat. What a beautiful walk.

A Genuine Photograph
Day 20 December 6 (Saturday)

I'm up early and on the Piccadilly Line to Russell Square. It was a hotel on Russell Square, where I spent my first night in London. The hotel-lined Square is much larger than I remember. The red telephone booths that dot the Square are wall papered with blue-tacked sex industry advertising. The advertising boasts "No Rush." One flyer claims to be a "genuine photograph". Around the corner is the British Museum. I picture sleeping streets and waking lions. A little further on is Tottenham Court Road. It was on Tottenham Court Road where I bought my first camera, the Pentax. I don't care for today's digital cameras. They have the personality of a television.

I join Joelle for breakfast before we set off for some window shopping along Sloane Avenue. We ride a packed tube to Notting Hill Gate. The Saturday afternoon crowds in the streets around Portobello Market are too much. After lunch in a pub, we walk to Hyde Park. The Prince Albert Memorial is Romanesque and St. Peter's-esque. Gold, marble, mosaics, an American buffalo, an Indian elephant, Prince Albert in an Elvis Vegas years cloak. Queen Victoria disapproved and the monument was covered until after her death. Walking through Knightsbridge, the pressing crowds near Harrods are thick. We purchase some supermarket food and have a quiet Saturday night indoors. On TV, we see the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, hosting a programme about Islam and the Crusades. Boris interviews Ivan's father.

Kew Gardens
Day 21 December 7 (Sunday)

An underground guitarist plays Jim Hendrix's Hey Joe.

Our last day in London and we are on the way to Joelle's favourite place, Kew Gardens. Joelle had lived nearby in Richmond, but we can't remember the name of the street. The barrier at the Kew Gardens tube station ignores our out of zone day passes, and refuses to open, but we manage an exit. Walking down West Park Road, I lose my footing. Ice! The path is treacherous. Who are the Gods, summoned today, to obstruct our passage I wonder? Just left around the corner there's the house. It's just the same. Joelle had lived at 110 Mortlake Road. Malevolent daemons are stirring. We don't linger and return to the tube station, cross the railway bridge, have a coffee at Starbucks and find the Kew Gardens' entrance. Frost covers the grass and the lake is iced over. We walk and walk. It's so beautiful. I picture an Alice in Wonderland hedge. A late lunch amongst blazing rays of sunlight, in the Kew Glasshouse Café, and it's time to return to Princes Mews. On the way is the Victoria & Albert. Museums are free in London so brief visits aren't the luxury they are on the Continent.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage, is in the Victoria and Albert's photography collection, a gift from Georgia O'Keeffe. As a painter, O'Keeffe shared what she saw without fuss. Images of flowers, the Hudson River, New Mexico, Ghost Ranch. Always dressed in black and white, she looked like a photograph. With her dark hair tied back, Stieglitz found her irresistible. On the same wall as The Steerage is a beautiful print by Joel Meyerowitz. One of a series of 12 photographs; The French Portfolio. The young woman pictured so pensive and distant.

Terminal Three
Day 22 December 8 (Monday)

The driver texts Alistair. He is on his way. 7.30am. A car glides slowly through the dark over the cobblestones of Princes Mews and comes to a careful stop at our door. It looks comfortable. A Volkswagen model I haven't seen before. We confirm Terminal 3. We load our luggage.

Shenton Park
December 9 (Tuesday)

Remi says, what are you two doing back. He's put a 6 pack of Stella Artois in the fridge. On the kitchen table, is Alix's Christmas CD and a note. "Welcome Home." She will arrive back from work soon.

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees,
They're putting up reindeer,
And singing songs of joy and peace,
Oh I wish I had a river, I could skate away on...

Joni Mitchell