Marcy Tilton — Bonjour Paris – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Lee Halvorsen •

As I paged through this book it was as if I’d wrapped myself in a flannel blanket of memories…soft colors, warm textures, familiarity, and comfort. Well, not my memories, but the memories of Tilton whose work often takes her to Paris. Over several trips she’s captured the emotions and feel of the city, intimately connecting with the people and places she’s brought onto her sensor.

Icons of Paris, the Eiffel Tower and the Louve, make brief appearances, but the book is not about “that Paris,” but rather about the people and places that are the fabric, the threads of the city’s foundation. Tilton and her camera explore sidewalk cafes, the waiters, the clients, all brought to life as they are, not posed, not touristy, but real life. The composition, the nuanced color combinations, the sense of life and motion give her images an awareness, a perspective, as if I’d been there, too.

The book has a “mood” of richness, not the financial kind, but the richness of the city’s beauty, its people, its places. We travel from cafes, to museums, to fashion shows, to libraries powerfully sequenced with color and geometry. High fashion mannequins on the left, facing page of a library on the right. How can that work? Tilton brought geometry, perspective and contrast into the mix and the two became a perfect match.

Tilton’s one-on-one contact with dog owners, street musicians, restaurant workers, families on the street is detailed and composed to capture the emotion of the moment. She peeked into the doorway of a restaurant at closing time, seeing a chef and waiter resting after what may have been a long day, not posed, not touristy, but a back door with two tired professionals. And then, the bulldog sitting under the table between his owner’s legs…we’ve probably all imagined or seen this and are immediately transported to that table.

Tilton’s career has been in the fabric business, her sense of color, texture, and impact have definitely influenced her skills that sense and capture those elements in photography. She easily takes us from a fabric buyer forum into a flower shop by using subtle color synchronizations and geometric transformations, e.g., small to large or vice versa in color or shape. The ethereal fabrics shown on a mannequin provide a delicate, understated theme for all the images…beauty, reality, fragility, impermanence.

The images are mostly color, but some black and white images appear. For instance, two facing page images of street cafes create a bridge back in time, they could have been taken recently or perhaps 100 years ago suggesting the timeless nature of Paris. The B&W image of a couple nuzzling in a café faces a B&W image of a couple laying in the grass cuddling bringing the “Paris is for Lovers” tradition onto the pages of the book.

This is a cool little book. If you want to see what Paris is like underneath all the touristy postcard views, this is the place to start. In fact, when you’re finished soaking in Tilton’s images, you may feel as if you’d already walked the streets next to the Seine.

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Lee Halvorsen is assistant editor, writer and visual artist living in Virginia.

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Bonjour Paris by Marcy Tilton

Artist: Marcy Tilton living and working in Southern Oregon

Publisher: Artifact Uprising

Website for purchasing book.

Binding: Soft Cover with perfect binding

Language: English

Hardcover 55 pages, 100+ images, 8.25 x 11 inches, ISBN None

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.