Willy

Today, we visited the Willy Ronis exhibit.

I'm doing a paper on it now, because I missed a day. To be honest I skipped class. I forgot to do the homework, so I woke up early with good intentions, and decided oh hell no and rolled over back into my tempurpedic king sized mattress and slept the day away. literally. I slept for a solid, beautiful 15 hours.

Sleep and I are very, very close. If I spend a night out, I need to balance it with an extra nap or two during the week. After a tough week, it’s natural for me to sleep at 14 hour night. Although I do appreciate the warm hazy sleepless nights and haphazard, coffee crazed mornings, stuffing your messy hairsprayed hair into something more manageable, or if not manageable, something out of your face, and wiping off the crusty glitter of the night before and soaking up the nutrients of the sunlight and a quick green apple as your body adapts to the changes in temperature and dehydration and the sores from the uncomfortable hot mess shoes that were kicked off at some point during the night, also known as early morning, and you fight the clutter in your mind like some kind of inebriated solider, elated to participate in parts of several worlds and combining the flurry and beauty of every single one into a sloshy night/day complex of notes and sour and friendly banter.

Speaking of. I am not used to the forward attention that men here seem accustomed to. Sometimes it’s appreciated; a rough 30 % of the time, I don’t mind talking to the adorable foreigner or casual Canadian. But to the majority of creatures lurking around the streets of Paris – are you kidding? What woman appreciates this kind of crude, untoward, grotesque attention? How do these people rationalize it in their minds? Are there actually responsive females that incite this type of behavior? Or is it based purely on crazy and animalistic hormones?

I am not used to it, and it makes me thoroughly uncomfortable. It forces me to examine myself in ways I am not used to. My friends here are a little boy crazy, and I love their enthusiasm, and I share their sentiments in theory if not in practice. I don’t know if I’m that type of person. Part of me wants to be, I want to let loose in Paris/Europe and go crazy, and push my comfort zones, etc, Eat Pray Love bullshit.

But I think I’m still stuck with myself. Which isn’t a bad thing, in fact it’s an entirely new level of self-awareness, which can be just as interesting as becoming physically aware of random boys in hot little nightclubs.

So do I stick with what makes me feel comfortable, in order to remain true to myself?

Or do I push myself to try new things, in order to grow as a person?

Willy Ronis was born to a pair of hardworking Jewish immigrants (“Willy” 1). His mother taught piano and his father ran a photography studio in Montmartre (1). As a child, he loved music, and dreamed of becoming a composer. His love of music takes precedence within the soft rhythms of his images later in life. Ronis chose to focus his photographer mostly on post-war life in Paris and Provence. He is most well known for his work depicting the working class districts of Belleville and Montmartre. He devoted his career to photographer at 22 years old, when family obligations compelled him to join his father’s studio (1).

Upon the death of his father, he began to pursue a journalistic career in photography (1). Ronis was the first French photographer to work for LIFE magazine (“Honorees” 2). By the end of his life, Ronis had become a member of the exclusive London Royal Photographic Society and had shown exhibits at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art (2). His skill had been well recognized during his lifetime, and he received considerable attention for his art.