Another day to sleep in left me feeling a little better on our third day in Paris. Our class started the day at Jeu de Paume, where I spend a considerable amount of time exploring the maps and compositions of Luigi Ghirri’s photography. I really loved his images and his concepts. The way he photographed advertisements as if they were real life photographic subjects were beautiful and thought-provoking. My favorite is probably the image of the tourists staring at a map in a way that made it look like the map was an attraction. He continued this idea by photography just maps and atlases which at first I was thrown off by. I was asking the question of why? Why is photographing images that already exist matter? But then I realized that everything everyone photographs already exists it’s just about capturing it in a way that portrays the world differently.
After that, we found a place to eat lunch and sat in the park outside the Louvre. (I was very excited to sit in the grass as most parks do not allow that in Paris). I don’t really have much to say about the Louvre. I found our guided tour to be irrelevant and unhelpful as we spent a good 20 minutes talking about the moat and basement walls. After the tour through an incredibly overcrowded art museum was done we left and were not able to go back in and explore by our self’s. As we were walking out we found out we could have reentered but at that point, I was tired and disappointed with the experience as a whole and very much needed food.
The art and museums were great but by the far, the best part of this trip was getting to be in a new place with some somewhat new friends and hang out. My group and I spent the evening in front of the Eiffel tower laughing and drinking cheap Champaign. This was probably my favorite night in Paris.