Paris means great food. Some tips:

Chez Mamy, 3 Rue Jules Vallès, 11th arrondissement, very nice, simple Paris bar with a good menu. Ambiance is great with a very friendly Patron..

Restaurant “Chez Janou”, 2 Roger Verlomme, 3rd arrondissement chez Janou. People were queing outside to get a table. What else to say..

Aux Bons Crus, 7 Rue des Petis Champs, 1st arrondissement, fantastic little restaurant behind le Palais Royal. This was our biggest discovery while looking for a place to lunch. Simply great!

And while in Paris, you should certainly visit the maison européenne de la photographie / ville de paris mep-fr.org. Especially the show ‘Rome + Klein’ on William Klein in Rome is worth a look! and so are the portraits by Martine Franck..

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India, April ’11

In Mumbai we visited one of the oldests law firm in India, Little & Co. The firm, founded in 1856, has its offices at the third floor of the Central Bank Building in Mumbai, a beautiful old English office building that seems not to have been touched since the firm moved in more than a 100 years ago. In 2006, Little & Co merged with Fox Mandel into FoxMandal Little. We also visited their offices in Bangalore and Delhi but we have never seen the feeling of old justice as we saw here in Mumbai.

After twelve days in India, this morning I arrived back in Amsterdam.. Had no time for reflection yet. Here 3 more photos made in India, that beautiful country of extremes..

Yesterday we went on a boat to Elephanta Island, an island 10 km out of Mumbai.. Perfect for a Sunday…

On the plane from Bangalore to Mumbai I read about the exhibition ‘Homai Vyarawalla, a retrospective’ in Mumbai’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Enjoying a free weekend in Mumbai, today colleague Manish and I were wandering around Mumbai when suddenly we found ourselves in front of the National Gallery. And of course we had to go in.

At the entrance to the National Gallery sat a very old lady, signing a book and being photographed. At 97 years old Homai Vyarawalla might look very tiny and fragile but she is every inch a lady and you can see very well what a strong woman she must have been in younger years.

Homai is India’s first woman press photographer and captured many decisive moments in India’s history: the last days of the British Empire and the birth of a new Nation, the hoisting of the first flag at Red Fort on August 16th, 1947, the funerals of Gandhi and Nehru and much more. Next to the news she chronicled daily life in Mumbai in the 1940s and in Delhi in the 1950s and 1960s. Her photos, being new to me, are beautiful. Striking, often iconic and full of emotion.

Very lucky to be in time to see the show, as this is the last weekend, and more so to encounter Homai Vyarawalla herself.

Some photos made today in Mumbai. Wow, what a city!