[Leica] Paris

[Oddmund Garvik <garvik@wanadoo.fr>]

At 19:38 29/11/1998 -0400, Robert G. Stevens wrote:

>Oddmund:
>
>To get back on the Leica topic, I bought a few used leica items in Paris
>about this time last year.  I got them at Maison du Leica ( House of Leica)
>on Bonne Marche.  Their prices were not any better than those in the USA
>but they had a good selection and were very friendly and polite.

Yes, they are nice people. The former shop keeper at Maison du Leica started 
his own shop, Double Expo, further on at 88 bd. Beaumarchais. He is a very 
kind and Leica wise person as well. Another one is Photo Cadet in rue 
Buffault (9th arr.), and Photo Suffren, the former Rollei Center, in avenue 
de Suffren (7th arr.). The others are less good, in my opinion.
>
>Paris was a wonderful city to visit and was the first time I used a R4 I
>had bought a few days before I left home.  I also had an EOS with me but I
>found the Kodachromes I took with the Leica looked much better than the
>ones taken with the EOS.  This got me hooked on Leicas. 

I was living in Paris for 13 years, and I never forget it. I've been walking 
for days and weeks, up streets and down streets, making thousands of frames 
with Leicas and other cameras as many a photographer. The countryside is 
certainly nice, better for the children, more healthy. But Paris is Paris. 

During my first years I was hunting the old, romantic Paris, the Lost 
Generation's Paris, Ernest Hemingway's Paris. You still find some traces, 
and: "There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who 
has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no 
matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, 
it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for 
whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when 
we were very poor and very happy." 
 

Oddmund