FRESH PERSPECTIVES

THESE BLOOKS CONCERN ASPECTS OF PARIS THAT ARE USUALLY SKIPPED AND AN ECONOMIC APPROACH TO THE PAST THAT IS IGNORED AS WELL

Why? Consider the ads that hover over great cities:

          The crossroads at the entry to southern Manhattan / Elisabeth Rawson

 The Châtelet crossroad at the center of Paris.

The figures they show are cut off from an outside world that blank space represents. They have no connection with others and their happiness comes exclusively from buying the brand. No tangible reason for doing so is given and the message may not even say what product to buy. The images promote a credulity that accepts nonsense and follows a command.

What's erased are contradictions to that mindset. And now deletion strikes physical aspects of the past itself. This ad overwhelms the facade of the 19th-century opera house...

 

       Ads on the facade first noticed in December 2023. This photo taken in September 2025.

and the giant, statue-encircled void that reveals its unspoken meaning is camouflaged. Marie-Antoinette's prison cell is replaced by a tablet. The spectacular vestige of the rampart in which the medieval Louvre fortress was ensconced is now the backdrop of a pretentious installation and almost invisible. 

Because even the enfeebled past we are taught challenges the lobotomy the ads promote, as globalized capitalism blows it away everything that obstructs its profits?

Harald Wolff

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The future is terrifying, but there is hope. A mural that recalls the struggle for the eight-hour day adorns the last stop of the métro line that links the Paris sports stadium with the southern airport: At every match, thousands of people pass a story that confronts the elitist narrative. It was made in 2024.

At the same time demonstrations against billionaires are spreading, for reasons that are local but connected. The participation of usually a-political people is a sign of their depth: I used to see only a few dozen Americans at the (rare) Democrat-organized demonstrations in Paris, yet almost a thousand residents and visitors gathered at symbolic place de la Bastille for the "No Kings" rally of June 2025:

 

In revealing a manipulation of which we are rarely conscious, these pages are part of that movement. 

Harald Wolff

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End of the blooks.

I'd like to know what you think of them.

If you find their ideas useful

please pass them on.

Harald Wolff

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