Fire!
07.1.2011 
In a world hurting for heroes, we always have firemen and women. In Paris, they are legends, with their sleek physiques, military discipline, and shiny chrome helmets. Recruited from the army's best and brightest, they are, of course, all engineering graduates, a revered profession in France.
The Paris Fire Brigade (Brigade des Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris), is a unit of the French Army that fights fires in our town, and with 8,500 firemen and women, it is the fourth largest fire department in the world, behind Tokyo, New York, and London.
Tickets to the various "fireman's balls," held from 9 p.m. on the 13th of July, and until 4 a.m on the 14th, Bastille Day, are only 2€ a pop, and the raffle prizes include week-long Mediterranean voyages, portable PCs, and lots of fire detectors.
Reader Comments (18)
What a fine photo essay! Richard, your opening shot should be submitted in competitions. Breathtaking. Dare I ask if you would consider selling a print?
Tristine
I want one of those great helmets!
Exciting, chilling photography! I love the Pompiers de Paris. And I agree with Stuart, those helmets are the coolest.
Tristine, thank you.
For you, I would forego my amateur status. But, I confess, I don't know a thing about printmaking in this digital age. Let me ask some photography experts here, and I'll see what such a thing would cost.
Hugs from us,
R & K
Stuart, Joan:
We ALL want those helmets. Although we were discussing them with a friend last night, and we all agreed that such metal helmets might cook your head in a fire.
As my French improves, I will try to make friends with a firefighter and see how we could get such cool headgear.
--R & K
Kaaren & Richard,
These experiences and visuals are so rich, they're almost decadent. But like dessert, when I do have some, I have the finest. I go to Extraordinary Desserts here in San Diego. Sometimes I'll savor a piece over 4 days, one being at the restaurant, and sometimes shared.
I felt how fortunate it is that you and Richard have one another to share and savor this richness together. Each visual and your writing can be savored over days. More than 4 easily. Thank you for sharing.
With love and great appreciation,
Marguerite
and P.S. I love seeing the French bulldogs on my walks. They are the original four-legged comedians!
I found this fact fascinating:
with 8,500 firemen and women, it is the fourth largest fire department in the world, behind Tokyo, New York, and London.
SONG
How can we ignite, and so be a
torch to ourselves and
others? How do we go from
human face to lion face with fiery mane in
gray twilight, or
suddenly come alive and burn that way with
ecstatic fixedness on our purpose as if bunches of
roses of sparks could be held
steady in front of
backdrops of violent black velvet?
Half our life is over! Whole cities sink down under their
streets. There are
trembling people here, long lines of them, each with our
own bedragggled faces. Fast food eaters, fate's failures, successful in
clothes but bankrupt in
hearts, naive flag-wavers who
don't know the nation they wave their
flag for is the nation of Eternal Light, not
cramped democratic darkness! My
hand holds a pen and feels death's electrical
storm up my arm. Down the
street at 2 a.m. a mockingbird
sings again! Gone for weeks now, but
tonight it's returned! Ignited by
song!
_______________
(from The Heart Falls in Love with Visions of Perfection, 1991, unpublished)
Dear Marguerite,
What delight to read your message! We were faced with that dilemma last night in a little restaurant on Canal St-Martin, where we ate a scrumptious Italian dinner with a friend who is here lecturing on film. After dinner, we wanted dessert but not too much, so ordered a small chocolate mousse that three of us shared. Perfect, just a few bites.
I am very grateful to be sharing this adventure with Richard, and to try to capture it together in words and images.
I've never thought of bulldogs as comedians, but you're right! And isn't that a fascinating statistic about the number of firemen in Tokyo, New York, London and Paris?
It is wonderful to have friends like you.
Love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Ecstatic Daniel!
I've been thinking about you lately, and this poem mirrors my thoughts. It's the perfect Fourth of July patriotic hymn to the land of Eternal Light, the only country I want to live in. "...not cramped democratic darkness"--that is a startling phrase!
"There are
trembling people here, long lines of them, each with our
own bedragggled faces. Fast food eaters, fate's failures, successful in
clothes but bankrupt in
hearts..."
I love the turn in these lines from "people" to "each with our own..."-- the way you move from looking at people from outside to being one of them. Subtle and surprising.
We're waiting to hear good news from you after your recent journey.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
great photos. some fire.
Really stunning images, Richard! Were these shots all from one fire in one location? I agree about the opening shot being particularly amazing. I also loved seeing the fireman with his bottle of water. Kaaren, I can't wait for you to meet a fireperson in Paris; that's going to be another great entry in Paris Play, I'm sure! (: Thank you for this...seeing and learning about Paris through your eyes. Much love, Jennifer
Hi, Jennifer!
Thank you. Yes, one fire, in one apartment, seen from the street side (front end, where the ladders and trucks were) and the back side (the courtyard). The place was gutted, but there was no ambulance activity, so I presume no one was hurt. All those other apartments, of course, have smoke and water damage. Having lived through such an apartment fire when I was ten years old (lived through meaning our apartment burned and we lost everything; I wasn't there) I feel sad for everybody in the building.
Kaaren makes friends so quickly that I expect a firefighter soon to add to our butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
Hugs from us,
R (and K)
I've fallen for the firefighter with the blue eyes in the fourth pic. I've always loved firemen and a French fireman puts a whole new spin on it!
Seriously compelling work, Richard. I see you as a photojournalist in a combat zone, what do you think?
Dearest Kaaren, thanks for the comments on the poem. I was looking for a poem I wrote while living in Santa Barbara during one of its humongous and really rapid forest fires, one that came down the hills twice or more to the city below, raging back and forth, and gutted four hundred houses, though killing only one poor woman who took refuge in a culvert. It was part of our inspiration to move east.
The poem has one fetching line about the fire running its hands up and down the curtains, but I came across this one instead that extrapolates to more of an abstraction, when fires such as this Parisian one are anything but.
The photos here are so sumptuous as to almost make the fire inviting... What am I saying! But all of Richard's extraordinary photos do that... I'm amazed the Paris population doesn't balloon from his shots alone... Every posting from you both is a visual and linguistic explosion of rare beauties.
Aha! Found it! Written in 1990, part of an unpublished ms entitled: The Heart Falls in Love with Images of Perfection:
FIRE
Fire enters the house without knocking,
tries on all the clothes, darts one quick glance at
personal mementos, childhood
photos on vacation beaches, lost lovers, grand-
mothers, great-grandfathers. Zooms up and
down stairs, blasts into
rooms looking for a place to lay down its
terrible, swift head.
Sings to itself as it works, like a petty thief,
a volcanic music --
insistent one-track melody to
drown out all the rest.
Uninvited, it has the nervousness of intrusion, does its
work furiously, methodical, faces forward.
Frantically tries everything out like a
teething baby, feels the varied
textures of drapes and
upholstery, runs hot fingers along spines of
gold-stamped books, lifts silk dresses by glistening hems
in fiery closets. Even
sexual passion hasn't this obsessiveness, this
insatiable completion with
everything it touches. This
impassive darting face.
The fire yells one last yell to itself
leaping from house to house, finally
lays down its head to rest.
Folds its four dimensional reality
into the shrill air.
_______________________
6/29/1990
John,
Thank you from Richard! Read Daniel's poem that FOLLOWS your comment. Doesn't that capture fire, in the medium of poetry?
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Diane,
So you like action guys, huh? Of all the photos Richard took, the face and posture of the fireman who captures my attention is the guy after the fire is over, face haunted, fallen to his knees as if he's just run from one end of hell to the other and barely escaped. He looks a little like Jim Krusoe, don't you think?
You will never see Richard as a combat zone photographer; he has no attraction to war. But I do agree with you, he'd be good at it. He thinks of himself as simply an urban street photographer, and believes these particular urban streets will never want for images.
Thank you and love,
Kaaren (& Richard)
Dear Daniel,
How can we thank you for such generosity?
I had heard that you lived in Santa Barbara, but that was after you and Malika had already moved east.
This poem contains the most imaginative and precise metaphors for fire that I've read anywhere. An intrusive thief, a frantic baby, an obsessive lover. But especially an insatiable thief. I think your wild imagination is most effective when it's focused on one earthly thing like fire, real fire. Then the two--imagination and sensual reality--ignite each other in the reader's imagination.
Thank you for sharing this poem with us.
Much love,
Kaaren (& Richard)