Paris Pinhole Journal
By Harlan Wallach

Composite photographs, created in the darkroom, from pinhole and 35mm negatives, drawings, and photograms

Arrival

Self Portrait at the site of first Surrealist gallery
When I spent several months in Paris as a student, I vowed I would return every year. I landed today for my first annual visit, after a 10-year hiatus. On the Metro on the way in from de Gaulle airport I saw a Senegalese woman asleep on the train. She was clutching a purse that had a metal plaque attached to it. On the plaque was written "Guido fashion line is only for young head strong survivors in a land of concrete, not afraid of jungle." She wasn't afraid, her mouth was open.

The Cathedrale of Notre Dame with photograms
After meeting Alphonse at a cafe, Un Chien qui Fume, we went back to the hotel. He insisted that I not sleep, that if I would just stay up the jet lag would pass more quickly. So we began the forced march to nowhere in Paris. By evening we had walked many bottles of red wine through the streets. We were far too Burgundy and Beaujolais and ended up at Notre Dame for an evening mass. The sun was setting through stained glass rosettes and the sound of the pipe organ came right out of the rocks in the floor. They know how to do great theater of the supernatural here.

Place Beauberg with wine glasses
We headed down the steps of the Sacre Couer and had long, long missed the last Metro. It was back to the Marais at four in the morning, and the flight, the walk, the sleep deprivation and wine had finally sent me into a state of persistent hallucination.

Interior of the Eiffel Tower with espresso
We walked down rue St.Denis, and the streetwalkers and their clients were everywhere. I felt like I was in Yellowstone National Park. There, when you saw cars parked along the side of the road there you knew they were watching a buffalo. Here, the groups of men clustered across the walk were staring at hookers in fishnet stockings leaning in doorways. Very Parisian.

Rive Gauche, with drawing after Picasso's minotaur

Death Day

Eiffel Tower with skulls
We started the morning at Pere LaChaise Cemetery, the great cemetery of cultural icons. It is incredibly dense with tombs, and as we walked it was "oh, there's Mozart," " Hmm, look, Edith Piaf is here too," "Paul Eluard..." and then we began to see the spray paint graffiti arrows on the tombs: "Jim - This Way." The closer we got to the dead rocker the more spray paint defaced the tombs. At the site, the surrounding graves were completely covered with immortal slogans like "Jim - Break on through," "We loved you Jim," and other such crap. A few leather tourists were reverentially getting high, someone named Pat Barnes had painted his name in red paint letters, three inches high, across the bust of Jim's forehead. Would it have been so bad if he had just left a bouquet of gladiolas?

Pere La Chaise with photogram
To complete our death day agenda, we headed down to the Parisian Catacombs for the afternoon. Over the subterranean threshold is written "Arrete! C'est ici L'Empire De La Mort." This is a place that has been a tourist attraction for hundreds of years.

Place Beaubourg and text from catacombs
It is the definition of the macabre, the skeletal remains of 6 million people arranged in decorative patterns, pyramids of skulls, thigh bones arranged in crosses. Here lie the remains of the unwanted dead of Paris. When the city grew and subsumed the graveyards of the common folk the real estate became more valuable than sacred, and their bones were moved here to be gawked at by generations of tourists.

No Big Deal

Eiffel Tower with Graffiti
Almost got arrested at St. Chappelle, near Notre Dame. The pinhole camera I had made to take photographs in Paris was an 8x8x10 cardboard box completely wrapped in black gaffer's tape. I had been walking around shooting with it for days, and on our forced march from one place to another, we thought we'd check out the stained glass at St. Chapelle. It's in a government building, with a checkpoint that you have to pass through. We walked in, and I had under my arm a black box, wrapped in tape. When the gendarme wanted to examine it, I refused. The camera had an internal magazine, and if it had been opened I would have lost all the negatives that I had shot that day. I couldn't seem to translate into French the concept of pinhole camera, or if I was, he wasn't buying it. He was sure it was a bomb. As I got more adamant about my refusals to open the box, I was escorted into a side room, had both the camera and passport taken, and was allowed to chill for 20 minutes. When they came back, they politely returned the passport and camera, and said, Well, it was just paper inside, what was the big deal?

The Residents of Rm.19 Grand Hotel Mahler on the balcony