I’d been wanting to get back into Nantes with the X100F to try and do some old fashioned street photography. I’ve been experimenting with colour and have had some interesting feedback. Maybe it was a case of getting it out of my system.
With the Canon I have a few interesting lenses and although it’s great having the options, it’s equally challenging to go without.
Now I have to explain something to the non-French readers. Basically the whole of France is on holiday from mid July to the end of August. My firm litterally shuts down for the month of August and we get four weeks off work! Between you and me, it’s also the best time to visit Paris, because all the Parisians have buggered off on holiday elsewhere!
The obvious consequence to this mass migration is of course the return to every day life in September. This return to work is called the Rentrée and sucks big time for everyone, even more than a small child sucking juice though a non plastic reusable straw, because single-use straws are the spawn of Satan and mess up the environment.
We have the children that go back to school, the TV shows that start again, the MPs that go back to Parliament, etc. You get the picture. Can you remember the Gilet Jaune demonstrators? We’ll they’re no longer in holiday, and are back to demonstrating. Their Rentrée was the 14th of Spetmber, and they all decided that it would be a really good idea to come to Nantes and cause a bit of havoc and make sure that the police knew that it was the Rentrée too!
And, (there I go using And as a beginning of a a sentence) this pillock thought it would be a good idea to go along into town, and thought it would be fine. And to be honest I have seen worse, but it allowed me to get some interesting photos.
Le Voyage à Nantes is an art festival that happens every year in Nantes. They give out maps with the green line that travels all the way through the city and if you don’t have a map, you can just follow the green line on the ground. Yes. I shit you not. They have painted a green line that you can follow all around the city. Did the creator have a cocaine problem but wanted to be eco-friendly? That’s not what really bothers me. What really bothers me is that the whole line is 12km long! If that’s not intense then I don’t know what is!!!
Not wanting to be selfish, and sharing is caring and all that, I decided to bring along Killian. He needs to get out more and get some vitamin D. I also needed a minder. He’s always good for that kind of thing.
We started by the most important thing of the day. Food. Luckily it was lunchtime so I felt slightly less guilty about eating in public. Right, the first stop is usually the Sugar Blue Café. I really like the food. It’s actually healthy, but not only healthy, it looks good, but not only looks good, but tastes good, but not only tastes good, but they have cheesecake. Yes. Cheesecake. I’m so weak. But it goes so well with the cup of tea…
Of course we had to walk a bit just to feel even less guilty about the Cheesecake. Did somebody say Cheesecake? I ended up at Place Graslin. Needed coffee. Kiki had a beer. It was a bit warm after all. About 36°C… I told him about the day I was there with Kate and that it was just as warm and how she ended up getting soaked to the skin in the fountain, and how I was getting all panicky because I didn’t have a towel for her or a change of clothes.
We had to decide how to follow the line. We were sitting on the terrace of Le Molière and thought we’d be intelligent. Bad idea, but we managed to get the map up on our phones. The line passes right by the café, and you can either go left, or right. We tried, rock, paper, scissors, which is generally foolproof especially when it comes down to who is going to pay for the beers. But in the end we went for the more conventional, “oh f**k it!”
So having “f**ked it,” we eplored the Cours Cambronne, named after a famous Napoleonic General, who decided that he didn’t want to surrender to the British at Waterloo… Ah well! Silly billy!!
He became major of the Imperial Guard in 1814, and accompanied Napoléon into exile to the island of Elba, where he was a military commander. He then returned with Napoléon to France on 1 March 1815 for the Hundred Days, capturing the fortress of Sisteron (5 March), and was made a Count by Napoléon when they arrived at Paris. Cambronne was seriously wounded at the Battle of Waterloo and was taken prisoner by the British.
The exact circumstances of his surrender to the British are disputed. At the battle’s conclusion, Cambronne was commanding the last of the Old Guard when General Colville called on him to surrender. According to a journalist named Rougement, Cambronne replied: “La garde meurt et ne se rend pas !” (“The Guard dies and does not surrender!”). These words were often repeated and put on the base of a statue of Cambronne in Nantes after his death.
Other sources reported that Colville insisted and ultimately Cambronne replied with one word: “Merde!” (literally, “Shit!”, figuratively, “Go to hell!”) This version of the reply became famous in its own right, becoming known as le mot de Cambronne (“the word of Cambronne”) and repeated in Victor Hugo’s account of Waterloo in his novel Les Misérables and in Edmond Rostand’s play L’Aiglon. The name Cambronne was later used as a polite euphemism (“What a load of old Cambronne!”) and sometimes even as a verb, “cambronniser“.
We said goodbye to the little girl and allowed here to get back on her pedestal. Or was she trying to get down?
We found the line again, and then saw a dotted line… Interesting… An alternative? Well, what the heck. We followed it and discovered traces of Nantes more artisanal past, traces of joiners, cobblers, plumbers, bookbinders, and industrial tribunals. I love seeing these little bits of history still fighting to leave their mark on the town. A town or city has to be in tune with its past and it’s own story. People leave their mark on a place. The question is how will leave our mark, and what will that mark be?
For the photo geeks out there. The tools today were the Canon 6D Mark II and the 16-35mm lens.
IJM Photography 