Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris looking at the work of this early photographer and those he taught. The first room cleverly used eight images to sum up Gustav Le Gray’s achievement and covered a huge range of work. He started teaching photography just ten years after its invention. Le Gray quickly got away from the idea of putting his subject in the centre of the frame and did not use the new genre to imitate paintings. He often chose humble subjects and even by 1857 photography was being used to document war. The last few rooms focused on the work of five key students of which I liked the portraits by Adrien Tournachon best as they showed real depth of character.

Exhibition of photographs by father and daughter photo journalists, Pierre and Alexandra Boulat, at the Petit Palais in Paris. I preferred the fathers work on the suburbs of Paris, women in America and WestPoint to the daughter’s work which focused on current war zones. I am sure her work was the harder hitting but somehow by focusing on the brutal side of war I found myself being desensitised. My favourite picture was by Pierre of two soldiers dancing at WestPoint. He had a vey honest eye.