Some More Paris Cafe Scenes

Some shots of the sidewalk cafes - and inhabitants - that were such an elemental part of Hemingway's life in the Paris years.
The first photo, and the last two are by Brassai.

Eugene Atget's Paris In The 1920's

Paris Street Scene


Prostitute, Paris




Cafe, Paris, 1924 6AM




Eugene Atget (1857-1927) was one of the most artistic photographers of Paris in the early years of the 1900's. He was also a skilled technician of the craft.
He was orphaned when he was seven years old and went to sea as a cabin boy on the Transatlantic. He gave up the sea after several voyages across the Atlantic and became an actor, where he performed in mostly second-rate shows in secondary roles.
He knew that he could make a living with a camera selling scenes to artists who needed a fixed image to study as they painted. He sold his work to the artists of Montparnasse.
He was a bohemian at heart and he moved to Montparnasse to live in the "art colony" there. He was a neighbor of Man Ray, and a contemporary of Matisse, and Picasso.

1920's Paris Jazz Age Film Clips

(I added this post because YouTube had stopped running the film clip just before this one. Well, I guess your cards, letters & calls of complaint worked, because (perhaps fearing unrest) YouTube has re-released the clip.) Gosh, can it get much better than this?
This is part of the old introduction to the above clip:
It will give you a flavor of the times if not as much of the personalities involved from the "Lost Generation."
(It ends rather abruptly!)

1920's Paris "Seeing Paris"

What To Add, What To Add?

Gargoyle on Notre Dame, Paris

Some Color

Some Color to break up the blog. Barges on the Seine in Winter in the 1920's

They Drank A Lot

Cafe De Paris

Paris had many appeals for the expats of the 1920s. It had a liberal atmosphere for artists and attracted painters, poets, and writers from all over the world. It was cheap to live there, it was an exciting, beautiful city and there was no prohibition on alcohol. In the US, Prohibition (1920-1933) was in full swing and people would go to extremes to get a drink - including moving to another country - if you could afford it.
This fact is believed to have been responsible for many of the Americans in the "lost generation" to decide to come to Paris.
In A Moveable Feast, cafe society was the important meeting ground for Hemingway and his artist friends to meet their contemporaries, discuss their work, and drink until their money ran out.

Beginning

Hi,
This is just a construction site at the moment.
I hope to add maps & descriptions of Hemingway's favorite (and, not so favorite) places in Paris in the 1920s.
If you've read "A Moveable Feast," by Hemingway perhaps you've been fascinated by the streets that he walked, the cafes he frequented and the addresses that he lived at. You probably pictured them and wondered what they really looked like, like his apartment above the sawmill and the cafe on Place St-Michel.
This is the time of year for it certainly, springtime in Paris.