Ode to Joy

Judith Bluysen, a relapsed street photographer now shooting in Paris, presents her work the last weekend of May in a collective show with 65 other artists. She is the author of several photography articles on the FUSAC site and the former owner of the American Grocery and Restaurant that we all loved, Thanksgiving.

In the late 1980’s Judith arrived in Paris, 34 years old, with 15 years of New York City in her baggage, two cats and a French husband by her side. She’d sold her darkroom equipment and stored her artwork and photos in her parents’ attic, and was allowing herself one year to decide how to remake her life.

Expectation exists even in unplanned lives, and rarely unroll as envisioned. After that first year they were faced with returning to New York or finding the means to remain in Paris. Determined to stay, they created and nurtured a retail business for over 25 years. As online sales in their sector caught on, Judith bought a digital SLR and taught herself the new technology in order to photograph the products to showcase online.

Perhaps that camera was the catalyst? Peering through a viewfinder again, considering light and depth of field, composition: all of those visual rumbles terminating in a satisfying shutter-click. Street Photography had been her passion as an art student in New York, and as she wandered now-familiar Parisian streets camera in hand, the love flowed back triple strength .

They sold the business in 2017. A second-hand digital Leica M and her father’s resuscitated Rollei were her companions for the next few years as she experimented and learned, solidifying aesthetics and redefining voice. She loves the gestures of traditional film photography: sliding subjects into focus, the click and subsequent cocking of the shutter, the anticipation of the image. The technical possibilities offered by digital allow wider visual creativity; both have their place in her practice. Street Photography documents our moment in time and our interaction with it; it is and always has been candid. It’s a spirit, not a style.

The expo is Friday and Saturday 30 and 31 May 14-20h and Sunday, June 1, 14-18h. Judith, and other artists, will be present all three days. The other artists in the expo are from various visual arts domains and from all across Europe. Vernissage Friday 17-21h. Free Admission.

Bastille Design Center, 74 bd Richard Lenoir 75011 Paris

Check out her website www.judithbluysen.com, or on Instagram @luluparee

Articles by Judith Bluysen on FUSAC:

• https://fusac.fr/triple-exposure/
• https://fusac.fr/women-war-photographers/
• https://fusac.fr/reconciliation/
• https://fusac.fr/weegee-autopsie-du-spectacle/

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The second expo we reccommend is

30 Watercolors of the CAPITALS OF EUROPE