Henri Cartier-Bresson

After compiling the previous list of favourite items about my humble abode, I neglected to mention a small postcard that I obtained in a small store near the Pompidou Centre in Paris. I'd never seen the image before (this was a couple of years back) but, having instantly fallen in love with it, I handed over my fifty cents and took it home with me.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the author of the above photo on my postcard was a French photographer, and the godfather of the candid street photography that has influenced countless generations that followed him. And although there are other far more famous photos attributed to the man (and well worth looking up on Google images as the man was a genius), the above image, entitled Brasserie Lipp, 1969 Paris inspired me in all sorts of ways.

I returned from Paris with the outline and much of the dialogue for my novella, 101 Ways To Leave Paris hastily scrawled into a small notepad, all inspired by the photo. (I recall composing an entire conversation in my head mid-way down a Parisian avenue, and having to lean against a wall to write it down). And then, mid-way into the writing of the novella, a three or four page section of it became the seed of the idea that became my novel, Secret Skin. Marianne, the character that Cartier-Bresson's photo drew from me, is the life-long love of two very different sets of brothers in novella and novel.

And the first time we meet Marianne, she is that photo:

1977. Marianne: they see her first in Montparnasse at La Closerie des Lilas; the café where Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, Jack notes to Victor (who could care less). The streets seem perfectly still around her. The blue sky of Paris suddenly flooding with clouds. On theBoulevard du Montparnasse the cars are turning slowly. Marianne is seated outside the café in the shade of a ring of trees, with a glass of wine and a copy of Le Parisien spread out before her on the table. She is wearing a short diaphonous summer dress that reveals her thighs. She continually piles up her chestnut hair with her hands to allow the cool morning air to her pale neck, then lets it fall. Through the window, some of the tables still have chairs upturned on them.