Jonathan Reeve Price, Asnières-sur-Seine, 2018, Giclée print, 28" x 20" (71 x 51.8 cm)

Let's begin with homage to Michelin, the tire company whose guidebooks and road maps have helped travelers since 1900.

Their esthetic is precise, prim, crammed with detail, drably colored, overlaid and underlaid with place names, route numbers, districts, monuments. Unpacking one cell of the map of greater Paris can take hours, even when you use a magnifying glass.

So I've blown it up. I like zooming in and out, studying the fragmented, pixelated black-and-white outlines of roads, rivers, and bridges. I can almost see the Google Map car going by.

Just across the river from Paris, Asnières-sur-Seine is a traffic jam, the end of the city sewer, a minor port, a hub of crime, and a medley of gigantic public housing projects, next to run-down two-and-three story houses.

The town grew up around a mill where local farmers could bring in wheat to be ground, then ship the flour out to customers in nearby Paris, just upstream, or down along the river to cities such as Rouen or Le Havre.

Donkeys pulled the ropes that turned the heavy stones grinding wheat into flour. These asses gave their name to the town, like some sixteen other villages throughout France, all named Asnières. Today, to distinguish this one, we call it Asnières-sur-Seine.

In 1859, Louis Vuitton found cheap land here. He set up a workshop near the pier, where barges could bring him the poplar boards he used in building leather-bound trunks for rich Parisian travelers—the basis for the luxury empire we know today.

At that time, the town was still fairly rural, compared with the cramped alleys and sweatshops of Paris.

So on Sundays, working people came across the bridge from Paris to lounge on the banks of the Seine to swim, flirt, drink, and dance in the guinguettes. A guinguette, an open-air dance hall, offered plenty of beer and wine, and a band, like the one at the Moulin de la Galette that Renoir loved.

Some folks disapproved of these guinguettes:

... Je suis allé au bal Perron, à la Barrière du Trône. Sept sous d'entrée, et on a droit gratis à vingt-cinq centimes de consommation; c'est une guinguette. Le joli mot que celui de guinguette, et comme il sonne bien à l'oreille. On a vu des guinguettes à l'opéra-comique, ou dans les estampes du xviiiesiècle, ou chez Béranger. On s'imagine sur ce mot des minois futés, de petits bonnets bien ajustés, des tailles sveltes et pliantes. Toute la gaieté, toute la vivacité française et parisienne est là, n'est-il pas vrai? Eh bien, voici cette guinguette : une centaine de basses grisettes et cinquante drôlesses, qui sentent à une lieue Saint-Lazare et la préfecture de police. –Taine, Notes, Paris, 1867

In 1873, sitting on the Paris side of the river, Claude Monet painted the barges tied up near him, and the low houses of Asnières.

Monet loved to work up the variegated architecture of houses on a slope, singling out each house as a distinct structure, even in its reflection across the water. But in front of this jumble of buildings, we see individuals strolling along the wide stretch of grass and sand at the edge of the Seine, now a park. Idlers? Casual strollers? Or locals walking to work?

A few years later, Pierre-Auguste Renoir may have painted The Skiff, on the banks of the Seine at Asnières (though some scholars think he was visiting Chatou, a little farther downstream).

Now there are two locals school named after him (the Collège Auguste Renoir, Lycée Renoir d'Asnières).

In 1883 or 1884, Seurat showed workers lounging in the sun, wading into the river, calling out from the bathing area at Asnières, to the folks sailing and rowing in the middle of the river. Leisure, then, and nature…set off against the railroad bridge in the background. Asnières was still a pleasant escape from the city, even though the smoke might blow across the river.

In 1887, Paul Signac, born in Asnières of a wealthy family who sold saddles and tack, painted Le Clipper-Asnières. Now development was bringing in larger buildings, closer to the river.

One sailboat is still anchored in the river, but no one is sailing, rowing, or swimming nearby; the sails are folded; the tethered boat floats in the shadow of yet another bridge.

Today, traffic flows haltingly through Asnières, with commuters coming in and out of Paris. The park along the river draws few flâneurs. No one swims off the pier. Barges continue to go past, and, just across the river, a flock of them serve as floating homes for Parisians who tie up next to the fancy neighborhood of Clichy.

If you look closely, you can see all that in the zoomed in map…right where I am pointing.

For more on this series, see our book, Remapping Paris:

https://www.amazon.com/Remapping-Paris-Jonathan-Reeve-Price/dp/0971995427/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=remapping+paris&qid=1561318709&s=books&sr=1-1

For Kindle, Tablet, or Phone:

https://www.amazon.com/Remapping-Paris-MuseumZero-Jonathan-Price-ebook/dp/B07LDKSWQV/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1561318709&sr=1-1

To follow blog posts about the series, see our blog:

https://museumzero.blogspot.com/2019/01/remapping-paris-12-asnieres-sur-seine.html

Our Process

Your picture gets our careful, individual attention.

We print it on a baryta-coated fiber-based satin paper with excellent archival properties, enhanced definition, and extended tonal range. Then we laminate the print to preserve the image against fingerprints and dust. Overall, our printing process takes approximately two weeks.

We then ship the print to you in a solid mailing tube, using U.S. Priority Mail, insured for the full value. We send you an email with the tracking number. Shipping usually takes 2 business days.

To get in touch, email us at jonathanreeveprice at mac.com