Parisiennes: A Celebration of French Women, Flammarion, 2007
Note: This first appeared as the introduction to Chapter 3 of Parisiennes (Flammarion 2007), a black and white phtography book dedicated to the lives of Parisian women.
Note: This first appeared as the introduction to Chapter 3 of Parisiennes (Flammarion 2007), a black and white phtography book dedicated to the lives of Parisian women.
Photographs may be frozen moments in time, but these glorious celebrations of women enjoying food and drink are very much alive. They are reenacted daily, and what memories they evoke in any woman who has spent time in Paris. They capture us. It is easy to see ourselves in these photos (although perhaps without the hats). I have looked through so many windows of pastry shops; read the menus posted at so many cafés and restaurants; wined, dined, and laughed at tables of all kinds. I am the French woman in the photos, perfectly captured on film. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are my favorite pastimes. Eating and drinking is about pleasure, but sitting down at the table is much, much more: with that comes conversation, communication, sharing, relaxing, dreaming, and laughing. It’s about conviviality, which sometimes seems to be an art that’s disappearing, although not so for the Parisienne. These timeless photographs prompt memories of moments gourmands I’ve had in Paris—wonderful meals with friends and relatives—but more precisely of my mother’s visits to Paris once or twice a year: les deux p’tites gourmands, that’s what our family called us. When mother returned to our family home after a couple of days with me, she had to give full report of all the plaisirs gourmands she had shared with me.
Still so fresh in my mind is a lunch at Le Grand Véfour, the celebrated restaurant in the Palais Royale where just drinking in the beauty and history of the dining room made our spines tingle. I remember how we were often the last ones to leave a restaurant as my mother and the chef would share a few culinary secrets on the doorstep. But these were grand and rare events indeed. And only she and I could taste the subtle changes next time she made her pigeon roti.
These photos capture the everyday gourmandise that is the tell-tale cultural trait of Paris, and sets it apart from other world capitals. I have shared many an afternoon with women like those in the photographs, sitting out on the terrace of Café Flore or one of its many cousins, sipping a citron pressé or a crème, or sharing a delicious fruit tarte—and most of all enjoying the moment. We could stay a whole afternoon doing nothing and not feeling guilty. Sometimes, after hours of walking the city, ice creams at Berthillon were another refreshing indulgence. And, ever hungry for life, dinner at a small bistro always beckoned, again to be shared with mother or a girlfriend or boyfriend (now husband), possibly at Le Voltaire where famous actors and personalities would sit nearby and remind us that the pleasures of the table are for all of us, and romance and friendship are just a few more ingredients in the experience of joie de vivre and art de vivre.