It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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© Marc Riboud, 1953, The Painter of the Eiffel Tower, Paris
“I walked up the tower, maybe one hour of walking. Some people ask me, “Did you ask the painter for permission?” I said, “My goodness, no. To talk with them was to risk slipping and falling down.” I’ve always been shy and I’ve always been trying to ignore the people I was photographing, so that they ignore me. I’m trying always to take a better picture than the one before but I was not sure of this one. I didn’t think after I shot the picture that I shot something interesting. I learned from Cartier-Bresson what’s called “geometry in photography.” It’s not dependent on what you’d call a good photograph, but good geometry.” (Marc Riboud)
Read an interesting interview with Marc Riboud from 1987 here.
Contact Sheet: (source)
Death Jump - Franz Reichelt jumps off the Eiffel Tower
Attention! Even though you don’t see anything ‘bloody’, you still see Franz Reichelt’s crash.
Franz Reichelt was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.
Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4 he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. Although it was clear that the fall had killed him, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was officially pronounced dead. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump – many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt’s experiment – and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels.
French Architect and engineer Gustave Eiffel died on this day in 1923.
December 15, 1832 – December 27, 1923
WWII: Europe: France; “American soldiers watch as the Tricolor flies from the Eiffel Tower again”, ca. 08/25/1944
Neurdein frères” La tour Eiffel “Tirage sur papier albuminé d’après négatif sur verre au gélatino-bromure d’argent, 27 x 20 cmBnF, Estampes et Photographie, D.L. 1900, Qb1 1900 folio, Exposition universelles, photographies de Neurdein, tome 3
