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Page 15: 1980: I switched continents. The United States of America: every hippy’s dream. Long live freedom and efficiency! My years in the 80s: Many memories, Many photos. |
![]() I made it! Next, the great leap: to become a FREELANCER, to become INDEPENDENT,…
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![]() Feet in the USA, par Christian Fournier ![]() |
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The stereotypes held by French people about American life are completely false and haven’t changed for decades : I read all the great French classics in a row : I was bored to death. Racine, Corneille, Molière, Victor Hugo, Rousseau, Diderot, Balzac, Flaubert, Marcel, Proust, Gide, Dumas, Stendha, Zola, etc.. Besides Cavnna, Camus, Jules Verne, Pagnol, Alain-Fournier, Boris Vian, La Fontaine, Hubert Reeves, Reiser, Alain Robbe-Grillet and a couple others that I enjoyed. Well, everyone has their own tastes and inspirations. Each to their own. American and British cinema is constantly coming out with one masterpiece after another (I’ll only put a couple of my favourites, the complete list is too long): The Dictator, Airplane, Back to the Future, Pulp Fiction, In Bruges, The Social Network, Forrest Gump, 4 Weddings and a Funeral, About a Boy, 2001 Space Odyssey, Midnight Cowboy, Jaws, E.T., Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Amadeus, Rain Man, Abyss, Scream, Avatar, American Beauty, Philomena, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo, The Impossible, Contagion, REC, Mama Mia, Apollo 13, Cast Away, Notting Hill, Kramer vs Kramer, Gravity, The Great Gatsby, The English Patient, Little Big Man, Oh Brother, Out of Africa, Pride and Prejudice, When Harry met Sally, Road to Perdition, Rising Sun, Titanic, Young Guns, Finding Nemo, Groundhog Day, Lord of War, This is England, Into the Wild, Juno, Ladies in Lavender, The Duchess, Hangover, Clockwork Orange, 500 Days of Summer, Now You See Me, You’ve Got Mail, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, etc… etc… That’s not to say that there aren’t some great films coming out of France. I’ve enjoyed: A Very Long Engagement, Intouchables, Klapisch’s trilogy L’Auberge Espagnol, Les Poupées Russes, and Casse-Tête Chinois, Le Nom des Gens, Télé Gaucho, etc.. My friend Francis Ronat, the deep-sea diver, told me once in all seriousness that Americans have no culture and no history, because of the native people. Ignorance is a serious vice.
-"France has the best healthcare in the world!” declared my girlfriend in 2001. |
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![]() David McCallum = Illya Kuryakin, actor in "The Man from Uncle" and Daniel Westin in "The Invisible Man". When I arrived in the States, everyone called me "The Invisible Man”. At first I thought they found me washed out. Then I understood! ![]() ![]() ![]() |
I got my driver’s licence in the US. Easy peasy.
Automatic gearboxes are a lot more common in the States. Yet all the clichés about them that you hear in France are again, false: |
Je ne comprends pas la mentalité des automobilistes parisiens. Ils klaxonnent sans arrêt, derrière les éboueurs, dans les embouteillages, aux feux rouges. Dur pour les riverains et piétons Ce sont pourtant des gens ordinaires, des médecins, des business men. On les croit respectables. Ils veulent le tapis rouge. Ils pensent qu'il n'y a qu'eux sur la route. Ils sont lâches car protégés dans leur voiture. Si on leur retire le klaxon, je crois qu'ils ne sauraient plus conduire. Se rendent -ils compte qu'ils montrent à tout le monde à quel point ils sont cons ? La loi Française dit bien, qu'il est interdit de klaxonner en agglomération sauf en cas d'urgence. Je n'ai jamais vu (ou entendu parler de) un automobiliste être verbalisé pour avoir klaxonné sans raison majeure. La loi, en France ne s'applique que quand elle veut ! Il faudrait donc faire un code civil qu'avec les lois qui s'appliquent vraiment, on saurait à quoi s'en tenir. A horrible anecdote, which unfortunately shows the state of mind of the Parisian motorists and makes me very pessimistic for our future: a woman honks behind a poorly parked ambulance because the doctors are doing a cardiac massage next door. I point out her lack of civility and she claims to be a lawyer and know the law ! |
I’ll never understand Parisian drivers. They honk, constantly, behind the garbage trucks, in traffic jams, at red lights. Hard on the ears for the inhabitants and pedestrians. Yet these are ordinary people, doctors, businessmen. You would think they would be respectable. They want the red carpet to roll out for them, they are the only ones on the road who count. They’re cowardly, hiding inside the protection of their cars. I think, if you took away their horns, they wouldn’t know how to drive. Do they realize that all they accomplish is having others realize how stupid they are? In French law it is quite clear, it is forbidden to honk your horn in an urban area except in emergencies. I have never seen or even heard of a case where a driver was fined for honking without good reason. In France, the law only applies when it wants to be! They should write a civil code with just the laws that are actually enforced, that way we would know what rules to follow. |
When I left France for the States in 1980, microwaves were only just appearing. In Arras, everyone said it was a stupid invention because you couldn’t put metallic objects inside it. In the States, I saw ladies of all ages organize meetings, like “Tupperware” parties to rationally discuss the advantages and drawbacks of these new machines. The Atlantic Ocean is an enormous cultural gap! |
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Something that always shocks me : in American movies, it is strictly forbidden to show even a small part of the breast. At the same time, it’s perfectly fine to show murder in fine detail, with a head exploding in front of a Magnum 45. |
“We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.”
― John Lennon ![]() |
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Henri Cartier Bresson : "Photography is putting your head, your eye, and your heart on the same line of sight." |
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Ansel Adams : "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good or bad photographs.” |
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Word from the photography master, Christian Fournier: "The brand of your camera does not matter, only knowing how to use your camera matters" ![]() |
Of course, there are plenty of great things in France: see page 49 |
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From travels in Europe by Bill Bryson On my first trip to Paris I kept wondering, why does everyone hate me so much? Fresh off the train, I went to the tourist booth at the Gare du Nord, where a severe young woman in a blue uniform looked at me as if I were infectious. ‘What do you want?’ she said, or at least seemed to say. ‘I’d like a room, please,’ I replied, instantly meek. ‘Fill this out.’ She pushed a long form at me. ‘Not here. Over there.’ She indicated with a flick of her head a counter for filling out forms, then turned to the next person in line and said, ‘What do you want?’ I was amazed – I came from a place where everyone was friendly, where even funeral directors told you to have a nice day as you left to bury your grandmother – but I soon learned that everyone in Paris was not like that. You would go into a bakery and be greeted by some vast slug-like creature with a look that told you you would never be friends. In halting French you would ask for a small loaf of bread. The woman would give you a long, cold stare and then put a dead beaver on the counter. ‘No, no,’ you would say, hands aflutter, ‘not a dead beaver. A loaf of bread.’ The slug-like creature would stare at you in patent disbelief, then turn to the other customers and address them in French at much too high a speed for you to follow, but the drift of which clearly was that this person here, this American tourist, had come in and asked for a dead beaver and she had given him a dead beaver and now he was saying that he didn’t want a dead beaver at all, he wanted a loaf of bread. The other customers would look at you as if you had just tried to fart in their handbags, and you would have no choice but to slink away and console yourself with the thought that in another four days you would be in Brussels and probably able to eat again. ........ La suite. Continued.... William "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and science. Born in America, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before returning to the U.S. in 1995. In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and served as chancellor of Durham University from 2005 through 2011. Bryson shot to prominence in the United Kingdom with the publication of Notes from a Small Island (1995), an exploration of Britain, and its accompanying television series. He received widespread recognition again with the publication of A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), a book widely acclaimed for its accessible communication of science.
Bill Bryson : Une histoire de tout, ou presque… est un livre de Bill Bryson expliquant le développement de plusieurs domaines de la science |
There are a lot of great things in the US. It is impossible to fit everything here, so here is a small selection. |
![]() Most people are friendly and helpful. |
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![]() Incredible landscapes, like Brice Canyon shown here. |
![]() Spectacular performances, like the Blue Men here in Vegas. |
![]() Adventure is everywhere and easy to find. |
![]() Alaska |
Colorado ![]() |
![]() The US Virgin Islands. ![]() |
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![]() Banyan trees in Miami with Janet. |
![]() Arches National Park |
![]() Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska |
![]() Michelle West in Sans Soucis Hotel in Jamaica. So feminine, so delicate. |
Aviation is easy to get into, and cheap. ![]() |
![]() Skydiving from very, very high, even 5km high! |
![]() The most beautiful show that I’ve ever seen in my life. Okay, I’m a huge fan of the Beatles, but still, it was 3D (the stage is in the centre with the audience all around), and the sound was grandiose. Thank you to Carlos Lopez for recommending it to me. |
![]() I met Bernard Hébert, Vice-president of the Cirque du Soleil, an amazing man, at a Concur meeting in 2015. |
When I had had it with being an assistant photographer, I went to a bank in Los Angeles. I explained that I wanted to start my own photography business. The banker asked me some pertinent questions, then said: you seem to be intelligent, motivated, hardworking, and in your right mind. How many dollars do you need? At that moment, I really, profoundly understood that I was no longer in France, where, as the great comedian Coluche illustrated, “To get a loan from a French bank, you need to prove you don’t need the money”. |
![]() Friends is an American television sitcom, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, the show revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. The original executive producers were Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane. Filming of the show took place at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. All ten seasons of Friends ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings; it ultimately reached the number-one spot in its eighth season. The series finale aired on May 6, 2004, and was watched by around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the fifth most-watched series finale in television history, and the most-watched television episode of the 2000s decade. Le 23 janvier 2023, au salon de Versailles, dans l’univers de FRIENDS™ avec de nombreux décors interactifs de la série, comme l’appartement de Joey et Chandler, celui de Monica et Rachel, ou le Central Perk. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() That '70s Show ou 70 au Québec est une série télévisée américaine en 200 épisodes de 22 minutes, créée par Mark Brazill, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner et Linda Wallem, diffusée entre le 23 août 1998 et le 18 mai 2006 sur le réseau FOX. Point Place, petite ville imaginaire du Wisconsin. À la fin des années 1970, Donna Pinciotti est la voisine et petite amie d'Eric Forman ; Michael Kelso, le beau gosse un peu crétin ; Steven Hyde, le fan de rock révolté ; Jackie Burkhart, la minette et Fez, l'étranger d'origine indéfinie, squattent le sous-sol de la maison des Forman, sous l'œil bienveillant de la mère, Kitty, une infirmière « légèrement » alcoolique, et celui agacé du père, Red Forman, vétéran de la guerre de Corée. Ce dernier fait souvent preuve d’un manque de reconnaissance à l'égard de son fils traduisant plutôt une difficulté à montrer ses sentiments. Il y a également Leo, un Hippie, un amateur de marijuana totalement déluré, ou encore Midge et Bob Pinciotti, les parents de Donna et voisins des Forman. |
![]() MythBusters is a science entertainment television program created by Peter Rees for the Discovery Channel. The show's hosts, special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, use elements of the scientific method to test the validity of rumors, myths, movie scenes, adages, Internet videos, and news stories. Among other things, Mythbusters teaches you (and shows you) that if a car driving at 80km/h collides head-on with another car driving at 80km/h in the opposite direction, the shock is the same as if the car hit a wall at 80km/h and not at 160km/h. Newton’s law of action/reaction. The wall pushes back on the car with a force equal and opposite to that of the car, so the wall acts just like a car going in the opposite direction and at the same speed. When a killer shoots at someone, his target finds himself thrown into the air. You can see it in any gangster movie. What stupidity. Just ask Newton. If it had that much force, the shooter would be thrown into the air as well. It’s like if a fly (the bullet) threw itself at an elephant (the victim). Yet even police movies are guilty of it. President Obama even asked Mythbusters to retest Archimedes’ mirror, because he refused to believe it was a myth. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Neil deGrasse Tyson The Big Bang Theory est une sitcom américaine en 279 épisodes de 22 minutes créée par Chuck Lorre et Bill Prady, diffusée simultanément du 24 septembre 2007 au 16 mai 2019 sur le réseau CBS aux États-Unis et sur le réseau CTV, CTV Two au Canada. The Big Bang Theory is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro. All three also served as head writers. The show premiered on CBS on September 24, 2007, and concluded on May 16, 2019, having broadcast a total of 279 episodes over twelve seasons. Une bande de docteurs en science partagent un quotidien fait de jeux vidéo, d'équations et d'amitié. Leur nouvelle voisine de palier va troubler leurs vieilles habitudes et va tenter de les sortir de leur univers et de les connecter à la réalité. "I'M NOT CRAZY. MY MOTHER HAD ME TESTED." Penny: Oh, big deal. Not knowing is part of the fun. Sheldon: I made tea. Howard: I thought you didn't like Facebook any more. Sheldon: This is the temperature you agreed to in the roommate agreement. Sheldon: I am aware of the way humans usually reproduce which is messy, unsanitary and based on living next to you for three years, involves loud and unnecessary appeals to a deity. Sheldon: Oh, Penny. I know you think you're being generous, but the foundation of gift-giving is reciprocity. You haven't given me a gift, you've given me an obligation. Sheldon: Howard, you know me to be a very smart man. Don't you think that if I were wrong, I'd know it? Sheldon: You know it just occurred to me, if there are an infinite number of parallel universes, in one of them there's probably a Sheldon who doesn't believe parallel universes exist. ![]() |
Father Ted est une série télévisée britannico–irlandaise en 24 épisodes de 24 minutes et un épisode de 55 minutes, créée par Graham Linehan et Arthur Mathews et diffusée entre le 21 avril 1995 et le 1er mai 1998 sur Channel 4 et sur RTÉ Two en Irlande. Acclamée par la critique et récompensée par plusieurs BAFTA Awards, elle fait l'objet de rediffusions régulières en Royaume-Uni et en Irlande. La religion y est mise en dérision. |
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Why is it a bad idea to major in physics? |
My favorite science fiction movies: A Space Odyssey (1968) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Rollerball (1975) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Alien (1979) Blade Runner (1982) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) The Terminator (1984) Back to the Future (1985) Abyss (1989) Total Recall (1990) Jurassic Park (1993) Contact (1997) Minority Report (2002) Avatar (2009) Inception (2010) Gravity (2013) Interstellar (2014) The Martian (2015) Arrival (2016) |
![]() Excerpt from Cosmos by Carl Sagan 1980: On Venus, on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system, there is evidence for catastrophic destruction, tempered or overwhelmed by slower, more uniform processes: on the Earth, for example, rainfall, coursing into rivulets, streams and rivers of running water, creating huge alluvial basins; on Mars, the remnants of ancient rivers, perhaps arising from beneath the ground; on Io, a moon of Jupiter, what seem to be broad channels made by flowing liquid sulfur. There are mighty weather systems on the Earth—and in the high atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars; lightning on Jupiter and Venus and Earth. Volcanoes inject debris into the atmospheres of the Earth and Io. Internal geological processes slowly deform the surfaces of Venus, Mars, Ganymede and Europa, as well as Earth. Glaciers, proverbial for their slowness, produce major reworkings of landscapes on the Earth and probably also on Mars. These processes need not be constant in time. Most of Europe was once covered with ice. A few million years ago, the present site of the city of Chicago was buried under three kilometers of frost. On Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system, we see features that could not be produced today, landscapes carved hundreds of millions or billions of years ago when the planetary climate was probably very different. There is an additional factor that can alter the landscape and the climate of Earth: intelligent life, able to make major environmental changes. Like Venus, the Earth also has a greenhouse effect due to its carbon dioxide and water vapor. The global temperature of the Earth would be below the freezing point of water if not for the greenhouse effect. It keeps the oceans liquid and life possible. A little greenhouse is a good thing. Like Venus, the Earth also has about 90 atmospheres of carbon dioxide; but it resides in the crust as limestone and other carbonates, not in the atmosphere. If the Earth were moved only a little closer to the Sun, the temperature would increase slightly. This would drive some of the CO2 out of the surface rocks, generating a stronger greenhouse effect, which would in turn incrementally heat the surface further. A hotter surface would vaporize still more carbonates into CO2, and there would be the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect to very high temperatures. This is just what we think happened in the early history of Venus, because of Venus' proximity to the Sun. The surface environment of Venus is a warning: something disastrous can happen to a planet rather like our own. 1. The albedo is the fraction of the sunlight striking a planet that is reflected back to space. The albedo of the Earth is some 30 to 35 percent. The rest of the sunlight is absorbed by the ground and is responsible for the average surface temperature. |
Entretien, avec le photographe professionnel Christian Fournier, le 25 novembre 2020, pendant une 1 h 20 minutes, à travers une vidéoconférence sur Skype. Les quatre membres de l’Intercom Agency étaient présents et toute l’équipe a enregistré cet entretien à l’aide d’un téléphone portable. Aussi, tous les membres de l’agence sont intervenus et ont interviewé le professionnel. PB CF: oulà, ça va faire très mal. Quand je fais un défilé de mode en France, je reviens, je Quand j'étais jeune et que j'allais en Angleterre pour prendre le bus, que j'étais le 7ème dans la queue, J'ai fait beaucoup de défilés de mode aux États-Unis, en Angleterre, à Amsterdam ... Là, les |
This is why I sent 12 years in California:
The Golden State La Californie à elle seule représente un quart de la totalité des brevets déposés aux États-Unis. Elle a aussi produit : Disneyland, Universal Studios, la Silicon Valley, Apple, Facebook, Hollywood, les universités prestigieuses : Caltech, UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Base Edwards, Stanford, Berkeley, l’université de San Francisco ou de San Jose, California Institute of Technology (Richard Feynman), Observatoire du Mont Wilson (Edwin Hubble y a prouvé l'expansion de l'Univers), Palomar Observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Steve jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Hewlett et David Packard, Netscape, Synthorx, George Lucas, The Beach Boys, Tim Burton, Joe DiMaggio, Serena Williams, Robert Frost, William Hearst, Sally K. Ride, Johny Depp, Ben Affleck, Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford, Tom Hanks, Robert Duval, Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Francis Ford Coppola, John Ford, Gregory Peck, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Fritz Lang, Pierce Brosnan, Shirley Temple, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Jodie Foster, Kate Hudson, Michelle Pfeifer, Cameron Diaz, Dean Collins, etc. La diversité géographique : La vallée de la Mort, Anza-Borrego Desert, Mappa valley, San Diego, San Francisco, Baie de Monterey, Baie de Santa Monica, Big Sur, Les Channel Islands, Santa Barbara, Le désert des Mojaves, Yosemite, Sequoia Park, Sierra Nevada, Reno, Mont Whitney, Parc national de Joshua Tree, Lac Tahoe, Alcatraz, etc.. |
One more LP of my youth.![]() |
Conclusion 1: I must not be bad, so that all these people trust me. Conclusion 2: Thanks to all these varied clients (industry, wedding, corporate and personal portraits, press, events, objects, medical, culinary, diving, sports, pageants, etc. ..), I see extraordinary slices of life, confidential or public, trades and fabulous countries. I do feel very privileged. Real life, live. Thank you customers. In rough estimation, I take 5,000 photos a week. 5,000 x 52 = 260,000 a year. For 35 years = 9,100,000 photos. Well, I would like to reach 10 million anyway! Conclusion 3: Photography is my language |
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There is also a search command, not always up to date, but pretty comprehensive on all my reportages. ![]() Due to manipulations between prisedevue.photos, prisedevue.photos and famousphotographer.com, some links may be broken. Sorry. I'm working on it ! |
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************************* MY BLOGS Not many photographers have the courage to show their photos on a daily basis. I do it to show that in a wide range of photography, I always take good photos for my clients. Technical perfection and an obvious sensitivity. If you imagine the logistic necessary for these missions (estimates, preparations, equipment, transports in traffic jams, safety, etc.), you can see that I am a photographer who achieves results in all circumstances.
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************************* Intellectual Copyright Property 2020 Christian Fournier. All rights are reserved. All texts, photos, graphs, sound files and videos in this website are protected. Their reproduction, modification and uses on other web sites than those by Christian Fournier are strictly forbidden. Most of the photos on my web site are for sale, except, of course, the ones for which I do not have the models or decor releases. I am at your disposal for any query you may have. |
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