One of my biggest indulges during this time in Paris has been Sundays spent at le Marché Bastille, one of the city's largest farmer's market. Today was my third Sunday in a row, and I made the most of it since it is my last (at least on this trip!).
This is nothing short of heaven on earth. Everything unimaginable is available, still smelling of wet dirt or already cooked and ready to chow. Yes, that includes everything from freshly cut local tulips to bull's testicles.
Ok, so Andy and I feel the same about Borough Market in London. But given the tall and endless piles of shellfish and stacks of cheese here, this might just trump that favorite spot. And it's just minutes from where I'm staying. The only thing missing today, in fact? Andy (who's back in L.A. sleeping as I write).
Forgive me for the extended album. This is actually only a fraction of my snapshots!

"New York 1983" by Elliott Erwitt: It's all how you see it.

Recollections in time, whether we were actually there or read about it decades later, can live so vividly in the mind's eye, thank, in part, to a snapshot that can turn even a split second into an eternally iconic image.

Such are the photographs of Elliott Erwitt. Whether it was capturing a couple kissing at sunset at a Malibu beach, Jacqueline Kennedy at the funeral of her slain husband, behind the scenes images of the cast of the "Misfits," a bird on a lamp post appearing grander than the airplane in the distance, or a chapeau'd pooch at the feet of her walker, Che Guevera grinning like Groucho Marx with a cigar, his "stolen" black and white images seize a moment that is very human, and in their humanness, something off, absurd.The appropriately titled "Personal Best" retrospective of this master opened Tuesday night at the Musée Europeenne de la Photographie here in Paris. It was a homecoming of sorts for the 81-year-old artist, who was born of Russian parents here. The family moved to the U.S. when he was 10, and he attended Hollywood High, where he began his life's work, assisting in the movie and photography studios in the area. He has lived in New York forever, and, according to his associate who we chatted with during the opening, continues to personally print all his work.
It was incredible to see him, and to stand in front of so many of this photographs, some very familiar, some not so (including a smaller image of the landmark Western Exterminator Co. sign on Temple near our home in Silverlake, which he shot back in the 1950s. A surprise sight that evening, indeed!)
There's a humility to his work, to his view of life through the lens, and to his persona in life, a journey man with a beat-up Leica M3.
The show runs through April 4.

Gone are the days of “every man for himself," drives the overarching theme of "Cohabitation," the forecast for 2010-2011 offered at the recent Maison&Objet design and furniture expo in Paris. The largest of its kind internationally, some 40 percent of the 3,000 exhibitors are from outside of France, and about 75,000 interior decorators, set stylists, designers, press and retail buyers attend the four-day fest. Andy and I were among them.

Besides sniffing out new discoveries from all sorts of places in the NOW! Hall (we're particularly charged by the fledgling designers we ordered from hailing from Prague, Copenhagen, Valencia, Stoke-on-Trent and locally around Paris), we always look forward to the curated, high-concept trend showcases set up in Hall 1. The trio of freestanding rooms are carefully composed with furniture and furnishings plucked from some of the more progressive vendors exhibiting (and a few not even in the show), contrived to relay a topic of influence and inspiration for the coming year.

For the 2010-2011 design year, it's all about "Cohabitation," as in the "transcultures," the "cooperative" and the "hybrid."

Today, and in the coming years, of course, the urban home is created with an eye toward togetherness, an environment imbued by the human touch.
Humanity is back in vogue again, and that includes nature. This doesn't mean going native. But it does mean enlisting technology to reconcile nature with urbanization--whether it's parks, organic foods, clean air.

The showcases were split three-way, each illustrated by (and with) design:
-Transcultures: An increasingly borderless world thanks to technology and commerce means a cultural exchange that begets a transcultural aesthetic. Elizabeth Leriche, who conceived this showcase, observes: "One culture enriches the practices of others to give rise to a transcultural aesthetic of world-objects that tell a unique story. Sharing differences enriches creation."

-Cooperative: Self-sustainment is giving way to mutual aid and participatory systems that put humanity back in the center. "We are stacking, nesting, constructing a fresh, optimistic style through variable geometries. We are sharing our energies in order to create the future," notes curator Vincent Grégoire of NellyRodi.

-Hybrid: Indoor and outdoor, nature and technology...borders are disappearing between these and other worlds in a cross-pollination approach to lifestyle. Showcase curator François Bernard of Agence Croisements says: "This cohabitation is producing new categories of unusual, well-meaning objects that work for a better life for all."

Since we always hit NOW! first, we'd already zeroed in on some of the highlighted products in the showcases--but mostly because they reminded us of home.
In fact, much of the M.O. behind the ideas and examples here reminded us of those things that are quintessentially the Silverlake, even Venice, heck Cali lifestyle: The vibrant palettes, the indoor-outdoor products, the cozy textiles and hand-wrought furnishings, the garden in a bags or glass bubbles, the bohemian seating and workspaces. And, most of all, the sense of communal living that embraces a transracial, transgenerational, transcultural existence.

Above illustration is by Mathieu Babin of Coffee and Brownie.

Ruven Afanador is a master photographer, and being able to sit just a few feet behind him while he worked this weekend was a rare experience I won't easily forget. Towering in both height and presence, the Colombian-born lensman is one of those few individuals who commands every detail of a production with such resolve that even the usually equally resolute Dita Von Teese, the focus of Ruven's lens Saturday afternoon, submitted to a nude lip and blue-black pointed talons.
Ruven grew up obsessed with beauty pageantry and Richard Avedon, and those influences breathe through his work, whether it's the matadors or flamenco dancers he spectacularly captured in his two pictorial tomes, 2001's "Torero" (an image from that book seen above since we respectfully refrained from shooting onset that day) or last fall's "Mil Besos" (with introductions by John Galliano and Diane Von Furstenberg, to give you a sense of his hold), or in his captivating fashion editorials.
This shoot, with its nearly four hours in makeup and hair, was for Spain's mass-circulation mag Yo Dona (and I benefited with plenty fodder for our beauty book), but, really, there was an underlying sense that all this was more than about that.
Though there was a small crew in the shadows on set Saturday, there was an intimacy between photographer and subject, a trust between two artists who were willing to push on, that was electric. Dita held her own in positions for a length of time that had the crew marveling (not to mention inspired to get ourselves to pilates and yoga toute suite). Ruven oversaw everything--the super-high Elizabethan-cum-Mellificent hair, the extra-long and thickly inked brows and lid liner, the wardrobe of sheer Fendi, corseted Dolce & Gabbanas and safety-pinned, ruffled and crystallized Jose Castro (a Barcelona rising designer who will undoubtedly die when he sees these shots).
Ruven rightly let Dita have her input when it came to the looks. After all, having vision is knowing when to step aside.