What is this picture about?! - Robert Frank - Paris

wiltw

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Thank you for the insight into the geographic area association of the beret within France. Not having been a resident of the country and seeing only the journalistic stereotypes associated with GI experiences in foreign countries during war, one never obtains that insight unless someone of experience can impart knowledge. Otherwise, what I recall seeing from humorous cartoon books given to my father and mother by my uncles who were posted in the military to tours in France or Germany during the early 1950's, all Frenchmen eat snails and fogs and wear berets, and all Germans eat pig's knuckles and sauerkraut, and have cold frankfurters for breakfast while wearing Lederhosen . Although there is one prominent beret within that first posted photo, it imparted no bias to my speculation about the significance behind the posters.
 
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chuckroast

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This translates as "Sin kills the soul", so probably some kind of religious statement.

Given the similarly of the sign structure, I wonder if the Robert Frank image is a sign that means "Are you white as snow?" which would also be a strong religious sentiment.
 
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chuckroast

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pentaxuser said:
Maybe not but this discussion in total is full of fascinating info such as yours above so that gives it life

pentaxuser
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Well, it could also be a promotion for the movie "Snow White" See:

Pierre Lambert's Blanche-Neige Book

You don't have to read French to enjoy the books by author Pierre Lambert. His series of titles on animation are packed with full-color plat...
filmic-light.blogspot.com
 

koraks

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cliveh said:
Does it need to be about anything? You may just like it as an image.
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Yes, in general I agree. However, in this particular image, the connotation of a social agenda is so prominent that I find it hard to sidestep the question what I'm looking at. Although I do agree that the question "what am I looking at" can often be answered adequately by "well, a photograph, clearly."
 

Dustin McAmera

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If the berets mean those are rightists, then they must have been racist ski instructors, protesting that their jobs were threatened by all the skilled competition coming in from Algeria and the Caribbean.
 

wiltw

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In French, there is a distinction of [noun...advective] placement (a literal modifier) vs. [adjective...noun] placement (a figurative modifier), which conveys a subtlety...
  1. 'Voiture nouveau' is a 'new car', while 'nouveau voiture' is interpreted as 'a (typically used) car which is newly owned by me'
  2. 'neige blanche' is 'white snow', while 'blanche neige' is interpreted as 'snow white'
 

MattKing

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cliveh said:
Does it need to be about anything? You may just like it as an image.
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When a photograph includes a subject that contains text, it somehow is more important that we understand what the text is about.
 

koraks

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wiltw said:
In French
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If my highschool education is worth a damn, I recall there's a default word order with the adjective coming after the noun, with exception of a brief list of adjectives. But this is something I'd really gladly leave to the native speakers...
AFAIK nouveau nouvelle voiture is correct (thanks for pointing out this slip below, @Dali...); voiture nouveau is not...Perhaps you meant this: https://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/lc/FrenchSite1022/ADJPLAboth.html But that's another list of exceptions!

wiltw said:
'neige blanche' is 'white snow', while 'blanche neige' is interpreted as 'snow white'
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Again, just AFAIK, but isn't Blanche Neige only used as the name of the character or the fairytale? I'm not sure if the word group 'blanche neige' as such occurs anywhere in the French language as an adjective. I could sort of imagine how it might, although I'd expect it to be spelled 'blanche-neige' in that case.

I must admit my French is mostly limited to brief niceties and 'supermarket interactions'...
 
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Dali

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Nouvelle, not nouveau because voiture is a feminine name.
 

chuckroast

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Thanks for that. So I stand by my suggestion in Post #27 - then again, it's a pure guess that may well be utterly wrong.
 

wiltw

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Dali said:
Nouvelle, not nouveau because voiture is a feminine name.
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Indicative of the fact I last studied French over 53 years ago, with little opportunity to employ what I learned then! The figurative use word order (adjective before noun) was drilled into us in French 1, as the exception to noun-then-adjective, or some other exceptions, e.g. une juene fille, un mauvais étudiant
Come to think of it, there is a literal vs. figurative difference in 'a student who is misbehaved' and a 'bad student' (who does not take their learning seriously)
 
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wiltw

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chuckroast said:
How many places can you go to discuss Leica lenses, stand development, and French grammar?

c'est fantastique!

(or, if you are in Wetzlar, Ausgezeichnet!)
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Or even the fact that we could be discussing Politics (heaven forbid) wondering about posters that say 'neige blanche'
 

chuckroast

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wiltw said:
Or even the fact that we could be discussing Politics (heaven forbid) wondering about posters that say 'neige blanche'
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Yeah, well I learned my lesson, the Mean Mods (tm) took me out back and smacked me around for even venturing near the P word.

These days I stick to safer pastures like "Why stand development is better for every single thing", "Why digital is inherently inferior in every case", and "Why Nikon is always better than Canon".
 

wiltw

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You continue to avoid why Hasselblad avoids readopting the need for 56mm x56mm square format frame
 

MattKing

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wiltw said:
Or even the fact that we could be discussing Politics (heaven forbid) wondering about posters that say 'neige blanche'
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Hey - we aren't totally unreasonable!
After all, in this thread alone, we let slide discussion about Franco and the Basque!
As a 23 year old in 1979, I travelled a bit in Spain, including up into the Basque region.
The political, historical and religious forces at play were both fascinating and photographic-able.
I need to retrieve some of those slides, to discuss the photography here on Photrio.
 

chuckroast

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Lachlan Young said:
Quite possibly the 'snow' that was generated on Bikini Atoll in 1954.
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Yes, this occurred to me as well. It would certainly make sense, but we'd need to know when the photo was taken to confirm this, I guess.

I have looked high and low to see if I can find this image and information about it. So far, no luck.
 

reddesert

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The book is Robert Frank Paris and the photographs were made about 1949-1952.
https://steidl.de/Books/Paris-0509344259.html
https://www.nga.gov/features/robert-frank/europe-1949-53.html

I am going to be a pain in the *** and say that the picture, like most of Robert Frank's pictures from this time period, is about the life on the street conducted by the ordinary citizens of Paris, and in this case manifested by people attending some sort of ... demonstration? advertising event? with placards.

What everybody in this thread is asking is "what theme are the placards and the event about?" which we don't know - but it also seems clear to me that that Robert Frank thought that was of secondary or little importance. If he had considered that important he could have titled the photograph, but Frank was not a news photographer.

It's like his famous photograph "Political Rally, Chicago," with the man's face obscured by the tuba: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265025 Who was the rally for? If it wasn't for the small ribbon on the man's lapel, we wouldn't know. The rally's theme wasn't the theme of the photograph.
 

Alex Benjamin

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chuckroast said:
Does the book have a title, publication date, or other identifying information?
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As I mentioned earlier, my suggestion would be to ask Ute Eskildsen. According to the Steidl website (the book's publisher), she selected the pictures from this book with Robert Frank.

chuckroast said:
Do I LOOK suicidal????
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No. If you were suicidal, you'd start a discussion on stand development.

In French.
 
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