With the grain master.

This journal seems to have hit a bit of a film streak recently, so here’s more of the same.

In the 1970s, the height of the 35mm film era, Ansco made a film named GAF500 which was a color slide film rated at a nominal 500 ASA. Given that most slide snappers were using Kodachrome II (25 ASA) or Kodachrome X (64 ASA) at the time, this was quite a statement.

The film’s fame owes much to the work of French photographer Sarah Moon who jumped on its creative possibilities which perfectly matched her impressionist – nay, pointillist – photography style. Pointillisme was originated by that most special of French painters George Seurat in the 1880s. Dots of color replaced continuous tones and the results were electric. Maybe his finest work is ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ from 1884 and you have zero excuses for not seeing it for it resides in all its magnificence in The Art Institute of Chicago.

La Grande Jatte in Chicago. The canvas is huge at 7′ x 10′.

At this time in my life I had already long decided to abandon dreary, failed England, where I had grown up and graduated in 1973 from University College, London, and had my eyes firmly set on the New World and America, a reality that came to closure in late 1977. But having been an ardent Francophile for the past 15 of my 26 years on earth, a visit to Paris was first called for. I had already devoured Proust’s magnum opus ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ not once but twice, had enjoyed a passionate affair with Impressionist painting, based on my readings of John Rewald’s magnificent books, and had maybe two hundred of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s images committed to memory.

What causes this flashback is not any great love of tea or madeleines (I dislike the first and rarely eat the second) but rather my son’s trip tomorrow to Paris with his school as part of his French studies. He will stay ’embedded’ with a French family – no English allowed! – for two weeks, half in Strasbourg, Alsace on the German border, the other half in Paris. Strasbourg with its overweening Germanic culture leaves me cold, but Paris ….

Returning to the Divine Sarah, I packed one roll of GAF500 on my trip in 1976, much inspired by her work. The rest was all TriX which is about all I used back then. Why mess with perfection? The greatest monochrome emulsion ever made. I doubt I had taken more than a handful of color snaps in my life a that point, but I did find GAF500 in my Leica on the obligatory trip up the Eiffel Tower and one of the snaps made there came out rather nicely, the essence of all that is French, looking into the fine restaurant atop the Tower.

Atop the Eiffel Tower. Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, GAF500.

So the next three weeks I will be living vicariously through my boy, Winston, whose namesake WSC was once asked how he managed to tolerate DeGaulle’s endless grandstanding in London during WW2. “He is my cross of Lorraine to bear”, WSC replied. Expounding on his theme, he added that a world without French culture, cuisine, couture and women would be a far worse place. Churchill wisely chose the south of France for his retirement, abandoning drafty, cold, rainy Chartwell to the tourist hordes. Here’s more of the same:

That week I spent in Paris was magical and I do not recall taking one bad image. This trio from the Tuileries Gardens about sums it up:

Tuileries Triptych. Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX.

May Winston have as good a time.

Vive La France!