In camera gallery presents Édouard Boubat’s Paris, a selection of original and vintage prints. The majority of these photographs, taken between 1946 and 1999, were part of the exhibition Le Paris de Boubat at the Musée Carnavalet in 1990.
We saw a thousand roofs, a thousand windows, we guessed a thousand and one lives; my mother would show me the stars. My father would sometimes bring me early in the morning to the market smelling of vegetables, fruits, flowers a real set and living paintings of human figures. […] After the war, when I started working for the magazine Réalités, all the doors opened, as if by enchantment, to the beautiful neighborhoods and the slums, to the unknown and the famous.
I lived at the Square des Épinettes above the trees, the seasons, and the playground screams, then Rue du Quatre-Septembre, then Rue de la Tâcherie close to Châtelet, and now near Sèvres-Lecourbe. And I saw a thousand lodgings, a thousand windows, and a thousand lights. […] Paris changes but does not wear away, and that is where its mystery, its sorrow lies. If we look at the photographed objects, we see that they depend on the wind, the rain, the cloud of infinite light, and the spirit of the times.
It is not for me to say where the poetry is, but we all know in this immutable Paris, on this Île Saint Louis, lived Baudelaire. Everywhere, these were the steps of all the poets who preceded us. For me, Paris is that. It is the Paris of poets, singers, musicians. Paris is our city, our cradle. It is all those who passed through. The photographer is just one more passerby. […] When I pass Rue Campagne-Première, I also know that Atget passed there, Rimbaud passed there. The real subject, light and the encounter, do not wear away.
Édouard Boubat
August 1990
Édouard Boubat, Paris
From June 8 through July 29, 2017
in camera galerie
21, rue Las Cases
75007 Paris
France
