“Why
New York and Paris?” journalist and photographer Frank Van Riper
asks. “New York is simple: It’s what I am. I was born in
Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, just blocks from Yankee Stadium.
New York is in my blood, along with egg creams, the Daily News, the
subway pastrami, and cannoli. Paris came more slowly, after my
friends Neil and Carol Offen moved to France in 1976 for what would
be a nine-year stay, first in Paris and then in Provence, after which
they wrote an amazing (though sadly unpublished) book about France
and the French of their day. My frequent visits to these New
York-born Francophiles helped form my appreciation – and ultimately
my love – of Paris.”
The
photos in this tome illustrate this love. They also lead to images
that exist in my own memory of these two cities. The fact that they
are all in black and white certainly contributes to the feelings of
nostalgia that come over me when spending time with these
heart-warming images. The fact that they were taken before “B.I.”,
as Van Riper calls it, before the internet, that is, means that they
bear testimony to people, places and things actually observed. Or
differently put: “If you wanted to experience something back then,
you had to be there. You went to the ballpark, the theater, the
concert, the reading, the lecture.” And, the photos in this book
convey this presence.
For
the full review, go here
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