I’m not a big fan of coffee table books about France in general and Paris in particular. For the most part, the photographs — while uniformly gorgeous in their full-color, two-page glory — leave me cold. Sure, you have your monuments and statues and the obligatory wide-angle lens shot of La Tour d’Eiffel. You’re almost guaranteed to get at least one mouthwatering photo of a Parisian cafe, perhaps even a glimpse into the window of a chocolate shop.
What it rarely has, however, are photos of what makes Paris the magical city it is: Parisians.
I love architecture as much as the next person, but to me, what infuses any city with charm and intrigue is the people who inhabit it. Any photobook of Paris — or France, for that matter — that doesn’t include images of its iconic population will fail to do it justice, IMHO.
So I was wary when I discovered The French Cafe at a used bookstore in Dallas a year ago. It has its share of “ghostly” (i.e., where the hell are the people?) photos of empty cafes (is there such a thing in Paris, of all places, where a writer once said that Parisians have four addresses: home, work, petite amie, and cafe?), but it does at least try to capture the personal spirit of the cafe by including as many photos of the French enjoying the ambiance of their favorite watering hole as the photographer (Eric Morin) saw fit.
Marie-France Boyer is the Paris-based editor of UK-based The World of Interiors magazine and has written a charming coffee table/photobook (for it’s really more Morin’s masterpiece than hers) about the definitive center of French life: le cafe. The book is divided into several chapters, each one devoted to a particular role the cafe plays in a French person’s world:
- Home from Home: A brief description of the cafe, its patrons and its staff
- The Golden Age: A history of the cafe, from its elevated status as the public salon for society’s intelligentia, politicos and privileged classes, to its current incarnation as the favorite place to see and, most importantly, be seen.
- The Workers’ Cafe: No stuffy interiors here. This is where the hardworking French proletariat come to enjoy a cup of java, perhaps a glass of wine, and meet his or her amis for a chat and perhaps a ciggy before heading home to dinner at the end of a long day. The photographs depict the cafes’ warm, unpretentious surroundings, from the rough-hewn wood counters to the folk art lined on the walls.
- Artists’ Haunts: Zola, Diderot, Baudelaire, Courbet, Manet, Whistler, Cezanne, van Gogh…all make brief but memorable appearances in this chapter’s two-page summary of the many haunts around France that attracted the country’s most celebrated artists. The usual suspects are included: Les Deux Magots and Cafe de Flore, as well as lesser-known but equally magnificent La Closerie des Lilas, Cafe des Arts, and more.
- Really Rural: Hundreds, if not thousands of little taverns, cafes and bars dot the French countryside, each of which boasts a personality and style that one can only find in that region and that region alone. Boyer throws in quick anecdotes from a handful of them, from their marvelous proprietors to their hardy, earthy customers. One of my favorite photos in the whole book is of a rural parish priest, still clad in his black robes, settling his bill at the counter of L’Image, in Preuilly-sur-Claise.
- Style to Style: Art Deco, Arts & Crafts, 50′s American diner, Scandinavian, Oriental…you name the interior design style, a cafe in France somewhere undoubtedly sports it. Check out the photo of the Bar Parisien, with the enormous mural titled Le Roi Boit, the gray-and-white mosaic tiled floor, and the green-white-and-yellow ceramic-tiled walls. Very cool.
- Cult Cafes: These are the establishments in which I’m least likely to be found; too trendy, too popular. Nevertheless, they’re curious examples of edgy-design-meets-intimate-interiors. Love the baby-blue sofas in the Cafe Marly.
Francophiles in love with the whole idea of French cafe life will find this an invaluable addition to their coffee table book collection. What I love most about the photos is that they’re taken from often close angles, allowing the reader to see details and facial expressions, the texture of the croissant, the crease of the napkin, the depth of the coffee. No impersonal landscape photos here, the images convey the intimate pleasures of le cafe, even without the presence of people to anchor the shot.
Note: The index lists the names and addresses of dozens of cafes throughout France, as well as a brief description of each.
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{ 9 comments }
Bonour, Marjorie!!
I love the book reviews you have been doing. This book sounds great. A fantastic resouce for all the writing in France we will be doing. La Closerie des Lilas sounds fantastic ( check out the link http://www.frommers.com/destinations/paris/D41307.html)
Merci for the post.
Great Post! And you KNOW I’d love it!
I’m reading Paris to the Moon right now. Have you read it? I should say I’m “trying” to read it. I keep putting it down.
The book Paris to the Moon was fab.
Now this is a book I could get into! As much as love the idea of the café, the only book I’ve read dedicated to that was Scott Haine’s The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789-1914, and while extremely informative and well-written, that’s more of a dry, scholarly work.
And, MIFG, you’re right, you really don’t see humans in most photobooks of Paris. That’s one beautiful ghost town.
Bonjour, LBR! Thank you for the compliment! I’m trying to figure out a set schedule for posting so that I don’t spend too much time figuring out what to write each time. I’m thinking of devoting Wednesdays to book reviews, which not only takes care of the problem of what to write, but it also allows me to indulge in my favorite pastime: reading!
I loved the description in that link about La Closerie des Lilas. Do you think you’ll go when you’re in Paris? I can’t even imagine what it would be like to sit in a place where the likes of Gertrude Stein and Hemingway hung out. I wish we had something like that in our town!
Salut,
Marjorie
Bonjour, CC, and thanks for visiting! I read Paris to the Moon about a year or so ago and absolutely loved it. I think it’s my favorite Paris book. I’m sorry that you’re not enjoying it very much, though! I found it to be beautifully written; it gave such a human, intimate look at life in Paris and the personalities who inhabit it. I also wish I could write like Adam Gopnik!
Salut,
Marjorie
Randal,
Bonjour! You know, while I was looking up various cafe-related books the other day, I came across that one you mentioned and bookmarked it for future review. I’m sorry to find out that it wasn’t so hot, as it sounded so intriguing! I guess the title alone should have been a dead giveaway — anytime you have a time period mentioned in the title in terms of years, chances are an academic wrote it (probably as a dissertation or journal article!).
Can’t stand photobooks of any place that don’t include people. My hubby loves to photograph landscapes, and of course I love his photos, but I’m more of a people-watcher myself so I like my art to be populated. Otherwise, the books tend to be too static and cold for me.
Salut,
Marjorie
I don’t want to disparage the writer, because the sections that aren’t completely saturated with statistics are good, but it’s certainly not an anecdotal, here’s-a-cool-story kind of thing.
I suppose I’m more like your husband – maybe it’s a man thing, Tinkertoys and Erector sets – but I think that stems from needing ‘clutter’-free photos so I can steal details when I’m writing.
Of course, there are times where the people are necessary and are the perfect compliment to a piece of architecture, so maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about after all.
Bonjour, Randal! I do like reading academic books, but I have to be in the right frame of mind for it. I still plan to read the French cafe tome, but perhaps in the new year rather than over the holidays.
My husband and I make a good team: he takes gorgeous landscape shots, while I do a pretty good job with people. When we had our wedding photo biz, however, he ended up taking tons of gorgeous people shots.
I like looking at Paris landscapes, including those haunting B&W photos of gates, empty streets at dusk, street lights, etc. There’s something about the composition of certain photos absent of people, you know, where the impact is even more powerful because of the palpable emptiness of the image. Other non-peopled photos just look barren, but a few still hum with humanity even without actual humans in them.
Salut,
Marjorie
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