1: Bordeaux Beyond Wine
Unlike most English-language books about Bordeaux, this spectacular photographic essay focuses not on the wines produced nearby, but on the magnificent architectures of France's "second city," its "Port de La Lune." These include the 18th-century structures and spaces that primarily define the city (the basis for its recent designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site), but also modern ones, including industrial and commercial constructions, and the emerald tramway that seductively snakes through the city (as if an alter ego of the Garonne), all designed to provocatively complement Bordeaux's "patrimoine culturel." The resulting juxtapositions, as captured by Garde and narrated by Verniere, are a remarkable, unexpected delight. A native of neighboring Libourne, Garde's earliest perceptions were infused with what Roland Barthes extolled as southwest France's "luminous light." After completing studies in sociology and art history in the crucible of France's "1968," she embarked - with author Verniere, another native of Aquitane - on a lifelong exploration of the world's peoples, cultures, and geographies. Their partnership has produced a shelf of books, hundreds of articles, and dozens of gallery exhibitions on three continents. Here, Garde's photographs exploit the sometimes unlikely chromatic effects of both natural and man-made light which accent the city's surfaces and environs, the nocturnal in particular. Verniere's text reveals the historical, commercial, and cultural currents - including the slave trade - that underlie all that stone and steel, sculpture and ornament, from the mosaic to the graffito. Lyrical asides conjure Bordeaux's evocation of locations as far flung as Siberia, Africa, India, even the United States. The reader is thereby afforded an intimacy with Bordeaux hitherto inaccessible to all but longtime residents. Meticulous Italian printing of the photographs, which Garde produces with traditional, non-digital equipment and film ("argentique"), completes the effect. For Francophiles and neophytes alike, this will be the perfect holiday gift - and one sure to provoke wanderlust.
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