Daily Blague

Anyone who follows JR's blog, L'homme qui marche, knows that its author is a brilliant amateur photographer. He has taken some of the most startling botanical photographs that I have ever seen, and there are two shots of a still green pond that I would like to have on my walls, even though that would mean taking down something that I love, just to make room. But it seems that there isn't anything that JR can't capture. The other day, JR collected about two dozen pictures of people, mostly in Paris but not with any particularly Parisian flavor, and mounted them at flick'r.com, under the rubric "This Life." That's exactly what you'll see, too: this life that you are leading, or at least its ordinary public moments. In almost every picture, you will see people going about their errands or taking a break from doing so. Nobody is rich, and nobody looks very poor. There is an unselfconsciousness that would be sloppy if JR didn't frame the shots so well. By that I don't mean that he has put form over substance. It's rather that the lens is always directed at or just below a head. Almost everyone wears the peculiarly modern combination of slightly stressed thoughtfulness and relaxed posture. We're on the lookout for something new, but we don't expect to see it.

My favorite is the one of the three girls chatting by the reflection pool, but I'm also nuts about the little tyke tearing away on his training-wheeled bicycle.