John Menick Blog

I’m in Paris for an upcoming show at la maison rouge, and right before leaving, I noticed Michael Kimmelman reviewed a photo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume called “The Event.” I consider myself persuaded. From the review:

The show surveys — takes snapshots of — five topics, which, presented in no particular order, are the Crimean War; the introduction of paid holidays in France in 1936; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the attacks on the World Trade Center; and the conquest of the air by men like Latham and Louis Blériot, the mustachioed Frenchman who, in a monoplane called the Blériot XI (guess what happened to the first 10), first crossed the Channel, gladdening his countrymen while causing the English, a few decades early, to dread the prospect of aerial assault.

The best bit:

When the French Parliament democratized leisure in July 1936 by mandating two weeks off annually, it promoted the new law through the government’s Organization of Leisure, circulating photographs of vacationers to magazines and newsreels. Frenchmen were supposed to look at the pictures and dream.