Niepce's Nest

Hi All!

So we just all got back on the bus and are leaving Burgundy! It was a long day! SO I guess I’ll just start from where I usually do – waking up. Got up nice ad early, 6:30ish and packed up my 4x5, film and the little camera. Went down to breakfast (well a croissant) but to the French whats the difference?? We got on the bus around 7. The trip was us and the SPEOS students, some of them. So it was a full bus! Our first observations was that French buses seem very out of place in a city that has all tiny cars – IDK how many of my reader (you few) have been to europe (actually that’s not true, I know all my readers and know they all have been) but anyways Paris and Europe in general has small cars compared to the USA. So this giant bus looks very out of place and seems very hard to navigate on the small Paris streets. Oh and in the first 2 min, righ after we left the FIAP we encountered a garbage truck and the road wasn’t big enough for the two of us! Took some time to work that out. And by the time we finally got on our way we were a good 30 min behind schedule. But that’s alright, I enjoyed trying to nap on the ride. Which brings me to my second observation. French buses, not comfy! No leg room, tightly packed, and just in general not very comfortable. I managed, but I twisted my back and butt into all sorts of messed up ways. Other than that the ride was pretty standard, Im sure you can all imagine it ☺. The French countryside is so beautiful! Flat in some places, rolling hills in others. Looks a lot like the Midwest, and in the morning watching the sun rise was sublime. Even though I was trying to sleep.

So Im not sure how much I mentioned it before (I never go back and read these) but our trip today was to Burgundy, Chalone Sur Chaone to be precise to go to the house that Neisphore Niepce made the worlds first fixed (daylight safe) photograph in 1829 (the actual photo is in a museum in Houston Texas). And see thousands of old artifacts from his lab and his house. So We continued down the road for a while and finally came to our first pitstop, it was beautiful outside! And of course I just had to take a picture of it. So I take my little digital out and go frame up the picture and go to press the button and I get this flashing message “No Memory Card” and Im like FUCKKKKKKKK! HOW COULD I FORGET THAT!! I felt so dumb, I still feel dumb! So I took it with my phone (which I’ll post). And I mean I brought the 4x5, which is good because I need to make some film work for Fridays crit (which is an all film crit) but I was soo bummed. Anyways we leave and get back on our way. BTW the trip is about 3.5-4 hours. I think we got there right around 11-11:30.

So we get there and get off the bus. And it’s a cool site, but not what I thought. It’s a very roadside attraction, lots of signage and its like right on the road 9 a busy highway). So its ehh, it was very cold too! I’ll post pictures (of course I tried to make it look pretty, but it was far from it). The first thing we do is sit down for a long lunch. A salade, followed by a chicken and potato thingy and finally a apple crip thingy. It was all very good! But I felt like taking a nap after (typical me). Oh and my day got better during lunch because Rezan had an extra SD card!!!! So I TOOK PICTURES> It was only a 512mb card but I still got like 50 or 60 Raw files. That’s enough for the day. Anyways Started taking pictured right away. OH OH I forgot to add, the restaurant which was next door to the museum was weird. They had this big thing on coats. I guess they were afraid there wouldn’t be enough room for all the coats people had, so they MADE us take them off in a separate house and walk to the restaurant. Oh and for the whole trip and 2 meals and like 60 people there was only 1 bathroom. They stressed the coats and the bathroom. HMMMM. Anyways lunch was good. Then we went back to the coat room, which doubled as a gift shop and also a bar and game room. In fact Im not really sure what the point of it was. But anyways. We sat there for like 30 min in limbo waiting for idk what. Then we split into two groups, the SPEOS kids and us. The SPEOS kids (they’re actually adults, but I’ll call them kids. Am I an adult? Do people call us kids? Or people?) ((I’ll always be a kid, and I think Im always going to call my peers kids)) Anyways they went to the town to a museum separate from the house (which we went to later, and I’ll tell you about) And we went with Perre’Yves (the guy who found the house and started SPEOS) to the house and toured around. The house was small but nice. It was really cool to see the first photo lab etc. But even the tour felt very roadside attraction esque. It was cool, but not attention gripping. That’s ok though, I got a slice of photo history. But that’s about it. Most of the lecture on the tour I had learned in my History of Photo class – and it was slow and he was too concerned that we were going to touch things and stuff that it made me feel like I was in second grade again (Although I managed to touch just about everything, and got yelled at (well not really yelling but you get the idea ☺) Im a very tactile learner, I touch everything in museums, its just how I work. Then after it was over (about 45min) he took us to this old church. Well I didn’t go, I just lagged back then went to go take pictures. I heard I didn’t miss much, and it was sorta optional (although I was the only one to not go, besides Anna (Our prof). It gave me like 35 or so min to use the 4x5 and the other camera and make some work for you all to see and enjoy! It wasn’t very sunny out, so the pictures arnt the best, but you’ll get the idea.

Once everyone got back we waited in our “Limbo” room again for a long time for the SPEOS kids to get back. Oh and we were promised happy hour somewhere along on this trip….NEVER HAPPENED. I mean Im not here to drink, but the day could have been improved by it. Nevertheless the others finally got back and we were rushed onto the bus to go off to the museum, which was going to close in like an hour and we had yet another guided tour! (You know I love tours…Sometimes. But I also, and maybe this is going to sound pretentious – But I feel like I have a decent base knowledge on art and art history. And even if I don’t know the artist I have the tools to be visually literate and read even on the simplest level work from several time periods – And unfortunately that’s really what you get on a tour, not an in-depth experience, but just a reading.) So the tour was rushed, a lot of stuff we all heard back at the house and just not very interesting. The work, when I could sneak away from the tour was pretty interesting and I enjoyed I looking at it! And the highlight of the tour was the final room. They had a 3D screen with a slideshow of hundreds of old photos projected in 3D. So we just sat there ignoring the tour for like 30 min looking at 3D pictures and fooling around. 5:45pm It was almost over!! We were all packing up and getting ready to leave. Which was nice. Oh I also forgot, I came to burgundy in hopes of buying wine, I even brought 150 euros to blow, and NO WINE. What a gype. They had filled our whole day up with tours and food and no wine, and in the heart of wine country. Oh Well, I got the name of a great market in Paris that has one of the best selections of wine in the city – I’ll check that out soon! ☺. So we get back to “limbo” and get ready to head into dinner. Which was less formal than lunch. It was basically a buffet in courses. A plate of sliced ham, couscous, and fruits, salads etc. It was all yummy. But they would bring out like 1 plate at a time and after like 4 or 5 plates, each one with a different food on it we got confused. Like they would just keep bringing food, every 10 min it was something new. We got so full!! THEN they took it away and brought more. A Huge plate of cheese, we got like a 1/3 of one of the HUGE rounds of brie and a harder cheese. And bread basket after basket. I ate way to much and feel very full now. And the coffe, OMG so this is an inside joke to the family – but you remember the guy at Le Castel who would refill our rolls even after a bite?? Well we had the coffee equivalaent. These women tried to push a new cup of coffee like every 10 min for the last half hour! It was hilarious! And she looked so confused when we didn’t take it….

So yeah, that was my day so far. Now Im sitting in my cramped seat on the way home. Which we should get there by midnight ish. Tomorrow is going to be crazy. Noone is even close to ready for our crit on Friday, and its going to be so full in the darkroom tomorrow. Im going to try and be in by 10 and out by 3 or 4. I need to dev some 4x5 and make like 6 contact prints from them to be happy. But overall Im not to worried (when am I ever??) I decied that this blog is my final project. And I like the work and writing way more than the film Ive been doing. Im just so ready for a break from film, at least until next semester. Im even printing on RC paper!!

Ok well I’ll probably think of more to add later on this trip, If I do I’ll update it! But until next time, BYEEEEEEEE