Elsewhere in this issue you will find a discussion of this year's Fête de la Musique in Paris, which, oddly enough, coincided with the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre.  Ric Erickson offers an on-the-scene report from the streets.  Here, Don Smith, a professional photographer in Paris who runs workshops there and produces weekly photo magazine Left Bank Lens offers us an array of photographs from the event.

Photos and text, Copyright © 2005 – Don Smith, All Rights Reserved

Fête de la Musique

You don't have to go to a formal outdoor concert because you can just enjoy some company at a café and hear a band playing just down the street.

Kick your feet up and relax while listening to a great band just down the rue.  There are no crowds but plenty of good music.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Here's the headstone.  On top, at the peak, is a used Metro ticket with a few pebbles on top to hold it in place.  People will do that as a way of saying that they'd visited.  Except for Man Ray - he gets empty film cans filled with pebbles.

Editor's Note: Man Ray (1890-1976) once lived out here, at 1245 Vine, just south of Sunset, between Fountain and Lexington, over by Gower.  Born in Brooklyn he moved to Paris in 1921, but because of WWII he moved out here.  He didn't last in Hollywood.  Ten years.  He moved back to Paris.  Perhaps he is of interest only to photographers - he learned the rudiments from Alfred Stieglitz, after all.  He hung around with Marcel Duchamp.  He produced amazing stuff.  When you are in Paris and visit Johnny Depp's club "Man Ray" over off the Champs Elysées you might want to ask one of the terminally hip young folks there if they know who he is.  Does anyone know any more?  One assumes Depp knows who he was.