Normandy 6 - Honfleur

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

Honfleur is a picturesque town on the Normandy coast, with a small harbour that has become a famous view. It was much visited and painted by the Impressionists.

Normandy 5 - Rouen Cathedral: other views

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

Normandy 4 - Rouen Cathedral: west facade

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

The west facade of Rouen Cathedral was a scene that Monet painted over and over again, in different light, at different times of day and different times of year. Our schedule didn't allow for many repeat visits, nor did we have access to the first floor room which Monet used as a studio, facing the west facade, and giving him a different perspective from a view from the ground.

Normandy 3 - Etretat

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

Etretat is a place of dramatic limestone cliffs on the Normandy coast. Many of the Impressionists painted there.

Normandy 2 - Monet's garden: the lily pond

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

It was too early in the year for there to be water lilies in flower, but a few of the lily pads were beginning to show.

Normandy 1 - Monet's garden: the potager

Last week I was on a study tour on 'Monet and Impressionism'. We visited a vast number of art galleries and also some of the places where the artists lived, and the views they painted.

Impermanence 2

The prompt for Week 2 was about time (for an explanation of this project see here) - awareness of time passing, of fleeting moments, and finding images to suggest that.

During this second week I was away in France with a study tour on Monet and Impressionism - how appropriate that this week's task was about fleeting moments! Also, because I was with a group, the taking of photographs was itself a matter of fleeting moments, images caught before the group moved on.

The photos here are mostly taken in Etretat, a place where Monet and other Impressionists often painted. The final image was taken in Auvers.

As we arrived in Etretat, there was just a brief moment when we were all stood at the railling casting our shadows onto the pebble beach

This scene of apparent calm serenity records a time fragment of about 2 seconds when no-one was between me and the sea

The conversation, the toddler, the man who is not the father oblivious of the child's approach.
A moment later the scene has changed: father and child have walked away 

Two figures emerge from bathing in the sea, the fisherman casts his rod . . . a second later and all has changed

Between two waves of the sea . . .

The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)

T S Eliot - Little Gidding

This last one is a little different because the scene is not what it appears to be. It seems to be simply a bottle and two glasses of red wine, all nearly empty, suggesting that two people have just left . . . But the glasses and bottle are stuck to the table and the red colour in them is permanent - this is an installation, outside the Cafe Ravoux in Auvers. In a room above, Vincent van Gogh spent the last couple of months of his life, painting in the vicinity, and then he died in the small attic room after shooting himself. This is a memorial, and the fleeting moment it represents is that of a man's life and death.

You may recognise the style of chair from the painting that van Gogh made of his attic room in another cafe, in another French town . . . but very similar.

Impermanence 1

I'm doing a six-week online photo workshop with Kim Manley Ort on the theme Celebrating Impermanence. Each week there is a prompt for the theme plus some notes and thoughts. 

For Week 1, the topic was 'noticing impermanence' and we were encouraged to take an 'impermanence walk' in a familiar place, and notice what had changed. It happened that this was an almost entirely wet week! Additionally, I was preparing to go away the following week. So a walk was not possible and I had to find my images in my house and garden.

A withered leaf from a Christmas poinsettia plant that's still alive in April

Raindrops hanging from a fence wire

Almost gone . . .

Almost gone . . .

The rain is rotting the camellia buds before they've even opened