Cool Stuffs

The pyramid of the Louvre museum in France is an iconic glass and steel structure that juts up from the streets of Paris in defiance of the cobbled square, just daring movie chase scenes to launch cars and motorcycles off of its gleaming slopes. Mime fights, glass cutting super agents, and video games where you can drive up the sides to shoot waiting pedestrians with bumper mounted machine guns have all given the pyramid a badass reputation. Unfortunately, you may want to rent yourself one of the many holiday villas in France and settle in for the long haul, because waiting to get in is the lamest thing around.

Don’t despair! The Louvre-Lens is a brand new offshoot of the iconic museum, tucked away in an industrial area. And it’s even more insanely awesome.

© Iwan Baan

On December 11 2012, the Louvre-Lens officially opened. It sits nestled alongside industrial complexes, mining sites, and suburban homes in a gleaming scatter of glass bricks. From above, you really have no idea how incredible the interiors are. The reason for the unrivaled awesome? The entire building is glass. Curved carefully along the landscape, the wall distorts light just enough to make sure the outside world won’t detract from your art viewing pleasure.

© Hisao Suzuki

© Iwan Baan

© Iwan Baan

All I can picture when I look through these photos is every sterile, technological, harshly lit superhero’s lair or villain’s evil invention laboratory. In fact, when I first flipped through these striking images I immediately pictured tearing the Batmobile in a slalom through the precious artifacts, and screeching to a halt as Tom Cruise dropped from the ceiling. (I wanted to hit him, but smearing crap all over Leonardo DaVinci’s works seems the worst type of defilement.) I also imagined listening to awful ambient techno while reclining my robot vagina in a chair suspended under giant screens for my video games. (You may need to watch Grandma’s Boy to appreciate the reference. This is a direct order, not a suggestion.) Then I checked over my shoulder in a panic because I could practically feel Hugo Weaving and his agent buddies breathing down my neck.

© Hisao Suzuki

© Hisao Suzuki

© Iwan Baan

© Iwan Baan

© Iwan Baan

© Iwan Baan

© Iwan Baan

I love the idea of a more rural offshoot of the Louvre- getting people out of Paris central and moving around more of the country, while giving them more places to experience culture, is a win all around. The Louvre-Lens hasn’t yet been tarnished improved by the aura that only popular culture and entertainment can imbue; I obviously appreciate it as a bastion for beauty, but my inner nerd screams out for a movie or a game to take this location and run wild with it.

Here are some unbelievably cool facts about the Louvre-Lens:

a 3,000 square meter gallery called the ‘grande galerie’ will exhibit artifacts from the Louvre’s collection without partitions along its entire 120 meter length
it’s built over an old minethere is an extensive underground bunker section to support the museum’s needsthe roof, walls, and corridor accents are made of brushed aluminum, bringing the shiny factor up to warp 10for the rest of 2013, most of the museum and grounds is FREE to attend. Free! More info at their website © Iwan Baan

So in summary: if you’re by France, in France, or planning to travel to France, head out to the countryside for a day and pretend you’re a super villain. Take in the gorgeous architecture, stop to appreciate the timeless pieces of art, and sit and lose yourself in daydreams… of screeching tires, sexy secret agents, and the spiderwebbed cracks of bullet riddled glass as you make your getaway.

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Next Interview

PHOTOGRILL: Why did you make the photo of the exorcist?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I photographed Bob Larsen for Metro a section in the Age in 2005, he was the Exorcist that had a run in with John Saffran on his popular ABC TV series ’John Saffran Vs. God’. The footage Saffron shot with Larsen was pretty disturbing. I asked Saffran (we did a photo shoot for A2 a few weeks before) about the ‘possession’ he had apparently experienced on the show and he assured me he hadn’t been hamming it up and that he had no idea what had happened that night.

PHOTOGRILL: How were you planning to photograph him?

PHOTOGRAPHER: With some trepidation I set off to meet the Exorcist at The Westin Hotel in Melbourne. Hotel rooms are probably the worst place you can do a photo shoot in. So I took him to the City Square to could use St Paul’s Cathedral as a suitable ‘gothic’ backdrop. I asked him to bring his bible and I set up a Norman flash unit with a soft box. Norman flash units are portable studio type flash heads with large battery packs for use on location when power isn’t available. Soft boxes or grids etc can be attached to the heads. These days I use a set of Elinchrom Quadra Rangers which are highly portable and come with wireless remotes so you don’t have to mess with synch cables. I use small Manfrotto light stands that attach together for easy carrying.

It was the middle of the day and I wanted to do the ‘day for night’ effect where you light up the subject and underexpose the background by several f stops. Exorcists don’t look very spooky in the middle of the day and I wanted him outside, so I controlled the light by turning the flash unit to high power, used a low ISO and closed my aperture right down for a more atmospheric result.

PHOTOGRILL: How How did the photo shoot go?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I started shooting and then all of a sudden three Ravens flew out from the bell tower and my flash unit failed and refused to work again for the rest of the shoot. I was really annoyed as I reviewed the shots on the back of my Canon 1Ds as I’d missed THE shot. In one frame Bob was beautifully lit and in the next the ravens were perfectly positioned but Bob was a silhouette. The exorcist assured me that I was not the first photographer or cameraman to have ‘technical’ difficulties while attempting to photograph him. (oooh spooooky)

Anyway I wasn’t about to let the ‘dark forces’ beat me so I used some modern day magic, Adobe Photoshop, to make a composite of the the adjoining frames and voila.

PHOTOGRILL: So are you an artist or story telling press photographer?

PHOTOGRAPHER: I think most press photographers these days are a combination of artist and story teller. If I’d just shot the Exorcist sitting on a seat in his hotel room it would have been rather dull so you try to get a little creative by choosing locations and lighting techniques and hopefully a bit of luck to make the shot more dynamic and tell the story you want to tell. Sometimes you can get pretty abstract with what you shoot but you still have to tell a story. Perhaps an example of this is a shot of mine that was published recently with a story on bad weather. I photographed a kids’ sandpit filled up with water. It’s kind of abstract but it tells a story in a different way rather than just photographing people running with umbrellas, like you’ve seen a hundred times.

a a This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011 at 3:46 pm. It is filed under Fairfax Photographers, The Grill and tagged with Creative Photography, Lighting, People, Photographic Techniques, Portraiture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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