Mill Valley Cultural Arts Umbrella

By Denny Lynch 

The letter from the office of the Mayor of Paris (Marie de Paris) arrived at my house in Hampden a few weeks before I mounted my photography exhibition in the City of Light.

I had invited Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to my opening on March 12 at the American Library in Paris. The brown envelope, which the letter arrived in, was marked urgent and was addressed to Monsieur Denny Lynch. Well, I thought to myself, it is only natural that the Mayor of Hampden extend an invitation to the Mayor of Paris.

Even though, as the letter indicated, he could not promise to attend (because of municipal elections) it was still a thrill for me in zone 11 to receive a response from arrondissement 04. From my early 20s to my late 50s I have had a real love affair with Paris. Initially when I went to Paris in the 1970s, I felt compelled to photograph the major historical sites since I had just begun my career as a social studies teacher. Then in the 1980s I began to record the striking elegance of the city with both my camera and my pen and ink drawings.

For the artist, Paris offers endless possibilities. Stunning subject matter and color can be discovered in every part of the city. The artist merely needs to be left alone to compose. There is nothing more satisfying to me than to wander through the arrondissements of Paris with my camera and let the day unfold without a plan.

Whether I am walking through the Marais or the Jardin du Luxembourg, I feel at home in Paris and I am able to follow my creative instincts without hesitation. To borrow a phrase from Matisse: “It is a kind of paradise.” This was my third oneman show in Paris. This time I was able to highlight my photographs of Ireland. Interesting enough, there has been an important Irish presence in Paris for over two centuries.

I arrived in Paris late on the afternoon of March 9. I put the luggage down in the room of my hotel on the Left Bank and went for a walk while there was still light. It was raining as I walked down Rue de Rennes when something wonderful happened. A rainbow appeared in front of me, a few blocks ahead. It had an arc so high I could barely believe my eyes. It was as though it had emerged from the roof of St. Germain des Pres. I stood under some shop awnings along the street in order to photograph this glorious sight. By then my head was swimming and I wandered into St. Sulpice to sit down. Inside it was dark and very quiet. There were a few people walking slowly in the aisles, almost in slow motion. Suddenly, organ music thundered through the enormous expanse of the edifice, and I thought to myself how lucky I was to be in Paris and experience these things.