Jonathan Reeve Price, Chatou, 2018, Giclée print, 50" x 25" (127 x 63.5 cm)

I'm looking through the surface of the map of the communes just downriver from Paris, places like Chatou, where Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted a party of canoers, with his girlfriend kissing a black poodle. He hid his technique, but I show my tools…the artifacts of Paintbrush, Photoshop, Pixelmator, and, of course, the SuperVectorizer, that produces a mere skeletal image, bleaching out the original colors.

So I carve out this complex chunk of highways, communes, and patches of the Seine. In this fragment, I love seeing how infinitely complicated the network of roads has grown as we get closer to Paris. And look how dense the labels become, with these villages jammed together, no longer "outside" of Paris, no longer rural, no longer a lovely green background for other paintings by Renoir and Monet.

I'm looking through layers, then, into an imagined past, one set up and staged by Renoir, through a web of trails woven into the fabric of traffic.

Colors block out areas, white space obliterates the people and cars and trucks and houses and factories in between the lines of roads, and the river.

At this magnification, you can see the delicate hand of the mapmakers at Michelin, and the volume of data they are squeezing into a tight space, just to help us move around, ignoring the past, driving toward the next meal, anticipating our meeting, planning our shopping, as we zip past each of these brief communes.

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-10-chatou.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 with us, email us at jonathanreeveprice at mac.com