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Most of the other invitees declined. They responded with "We just got back from Disney World and we’re broke" or (my personal favorite) "I just met the woman with whom I will spend the rest of my life, so I could never leave her and go to France." France, I thought? I can’t afford that. I just got divorced. I’m broke. I’m too busy. The excuses were many. But then I realized I might never get an invitation or an opportunity like this again. I couldn’t afford not to go. So I went for it. Travel arrangements were made and in June of 1999 I found myself on a flight from Detroit to Paris - alone - with no ability to speak French. My brain swirled with expectations, fears and questions, but mostly with excitement when I thought of the adventure that lay before me. When I arrived in Paris via cab from Charles de Gaulle airport, I was overtaken with emotion. I was in a foreign culture thousands of miles from my home in Detroit, where I knew no one, yet, strange as it might seem, I felt as if I had come home. Home. I had spent most of my life feeling like an outsider, as if I never quite belonged to anything. Perhaps that is why I became a photographer. It’s a perfect career for one who is always on the outside looking in. After meeting my friends in Paris and spending a few days there, we traveled via TGV (the French high speed train) to Orange and then drove to Vaison la Romaine, where we would celebrate what was being called "la fete de Mark." In Provence I began to understand, for the first time in my life, what French Impressionism was about. I saw light that I had never seen before. I could not stop shooting pictures. At every turn there was a new image. I constantly marveled at the light that bathed and caressed what I began to see as one of the most beautiful landscapes and cultures I had ever experienced. I fell completely in love with the culture, the cuisine, the language, the pace of life, and the people of Provence. Even though I still couldn’t speak the language (although my friends told me that my French accent was getting pretty good), I felt as if I had found a place that I belonged. I returned to Detroit after only eight days in France feeling as if my life had been transformed. Never again would I see the world with the same pair of eyes. Up until this point my work had a gritty black-and-white feel to it. I tended to see the world in shades of grey. I suppose I am very much a product of Detroit, both in terms of my blue-collar work ethic and my sense of aesthetics. Now I shoot almost exclusively in color. I see things more and more in the abstract. More often than not my personal work is about light and color, texture and design. There is no question but that France, or at least the small part that I have seen, is absolutely beautiful. There must have been something very special there to move all those artists to create what they did. And both Paris and Provence have inspired so many artists, writers, photographers, etc. I keep thinking that there must be many places that are equally as beautiful and inspiring, but I haven't found them yet. In December of 2000, a year and a half after the first trip, I returned to Provence. I wondered if the feeling would be the same – and it was. Everything I experienced on the second trip re-enforced what I had experienced on the first. This trip lasted 12 days. My third trip, in December of 2002, was for 16 days. Again I felt as if I had returned home. I don't know if there is such a thing as reincarnation. If there is, however, I feel I have lived in France in some previous life. I have traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada and I have never felt what I feel when I am in France. The most recent trip was in April of 2004. My significant other and I flew to Paris and met up with some friends from Detroit and Canada. We spent a few days there and then traveled by train to Avignon. On this trip we rented a house in the countryside. One of the highlights of the trip was Easter Sunday. We had dinner at a wonderful little restaurant that specialized in wild game. The dinner party was Margaret and I, our Canadian friends Mark, Diane and Alexandre, their adopted Vietnamese son, and a group of friends from England, whom we had met on a previous trip. Perhaps I am being overly romantic about my experiences in France. I don't know, but then I'm not sure that I really care. I realize that no country is perfect, but I love the culture, the food, the language, the pace of life, the joi de vie. I love the fact that food, wine, art, conversation, and romance are priorities. And at the moment I long to be in a place that isn’t mired in an imperialistic, immoral war. And of course I love the light, the color and the texture of it all. Sometimes I feel more like a foreigner here than I do in that country where they speak that beautiful language that I can't understand. I have used my camera to make a living for nearly 35 years and that has involved making photographs of all kinds of things that mean very little to me, but I keep doing the work because it pays the bills. In my France-state-of-being, I can find beauty and I can make beautiful images. I can be consumed by color and texture. Perhaps more than anything else, I can be in touch with my soul. I can’t wait to go back. Joe Crachiola
Michael: It's one of those nights when I can't sleep, so I might as well write. I have been re-thinking what I sent you earlier. I don't exactly know how to put this, but I'll do my best. What I keep coming back to is the idea that "France" for me is really a state of mind. It is a state of mind wherein I am not bombarded with the crass commercialism and consumerism that is America. It is a state of mind wherein I can find beauty and simplicity and romance and, perhaps above all else, peace. Maybe it's the time of life, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, or 'maybe it's the time of man'. I am tired of greed and violence and ignorance. I'm tired of idiots who get into fights over sporting events and the moronic overpaid athletes who play the games. I'm tired of people intruding on my life to sell me garbage that I neither want nor need. I'm tired of idiots who would rather find black and white answers to life's deepest and most complex questions and who would then force their will on others. (We gotta create democracy in Iraq. What Crap!) When I am sailing I find that soul connection and I occasionally find it on my trips to Harbor Springs and the Traverse Bay region and I have found it in little corners of Key West. It exists there in small doses. Unfortunately one has to be pretty well off to live in Harbor Springs or Key West and they are both only a few square miles surrounded my more American excess, and my sailing season is way too short. So, I'm rambling and my glass of Armangac is nearly empty and I'm feeling like I might be able to go back to sleep. I don't know if any of this makes a damned bit of sense, but there it is. Peace,
Photographing
France slide show | Photographing France
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