FEAST OR FAMINE

  French photographer Henri Royer is exhibiting his nature photographs of a   Journey to Ecuador  in the Town Hall of the 6 th   district in Paris from 10-31 May 2025.     He travelled to Ecuador in South America to photograph the natural wonders of the country. Visiting many locations across Ecuador to capture nature’s diversity, he travelled to the Andes, the Amazon river basin, and the Galapagos Islands, a World Heritage Site located at the Equator, 900 kilometres (560 miles) west of Ecuador.    His nature photographs predominantly feature birds, but also include reptiles and insects.

City Nature:  Tales of Ornery Plants, Opinionated Birds, Gardening Triumphs and Tragedies, and Capturing it All Through a Lens (2024) is set in Tucson, Arizona in America, from about 2018 to the present day.   Martha Retallick is a photographer and journalist documenting urban nature in her home state. She purchased her home in 2004 and has been transforming the property into an urban oasis from scratch – a desert property where water is a scarcity.    She focuses on active and passive water harvesting and upcycling (repurposing objects), but essentially, she discusses three themes: 1) nature and the built environment (landscaping in an arid environment), 2) nature nourishes (urban agriculture, including three recipes), and 3) nature delights (her photographs).   She begins by mentioning her artistic home – a cross-cutting theme throughout the book in which her knowledge of landscaping is accompanied by her photographs, about 60 of them. Residential irrigation i...

Eight Mexican artists are exhibiting their works in the  Terre du Mexique  –  Land of Mexico  – exhibition in Paris.    The eight artists are: Sergio Peraza, Namiko Prado, Oscar Villarreal, Eduardo Maldonado, Monserrat de la Parra, Ivonne Gonzpad and Lucero Rodriguez who currently live, or have lived, in France, and Yuma Diaz who comes from Oaxaca in Mexico, The influence of both countries   – France and Mexico – is  reflected in their works.   This new group exhibition  enables   viewers  to rediscover fundamental artists in the Franco-Mexican artistic field ,  such as Yuma Diaz, Namiko Prado, Oscar Villarreal and the sculptor Sergio Peraza alongside new talents , such as  Eduardo Maldonado, Monserrat de la Parra, Ivonne Gonzalez Padilla, and Lucero Rodriguez  who will be  exhibiting  for the first time in Paris.   This  Terre du Mexique  –  Land of Mexico  – exhibition can be ...

  Indignation  by Philip Roth (2008) is set in 1951-1952 in Ohio, America, during the Korean War.   Marcus Messner is nineteen years old and an A-grade student at Ohio’s Wineburg College. He was originally enrolled in a college in his hometown of Newark but changed college to get away from his parents, particularly his father, a hard-working butcher paranoid that his son Marcus will be drafted into the war and be killed in action.    Marcus just wants to do well in college – to keep to himself – even refusing to join a fraternity. The Dean of Men, Mr. Caudwell, calls Marcus into his office, concerned that he is not involved in college social life.    Marcus is indignant. He even thinks indignation is “the most beautiful word in the English language: in-dig- na -tion!” What is Marcus indignant about? What fills him with anger about his unfair treatment? Is this indignation righteous?   The setting over the duration of a year is the college, and cha...

  The Chase  by Candice Fox (2021) is a crime thriller set in the Nevada Desert in America.    A man takes a bus load of people hostage: 12 women, 8 men, and 14 children. They are the family members of prison guards at the Pronghorn Correctional Facility in Nevada. The man demands the release of more than 600 inmates in the prison, including everyone on Death Row. His demands are met and 600 prisoners are freed – into the desert.    One of the released prisoners – the escapees – is John Kradle, convicted of murdering his wife and son. He hasn’t seen a sunset in ten years: and now he is looking at the tomato-red sun. He pulls himself together when he realizes that this is his chance to prove his innocence. But to do that, he must avoid capture because every law enforcer in the area is hell-bent on re-capturing the escapees.    In the vein of the 1963-67 television series and 1993 movie  The Fugitive,  the chase is on – multiplied by 600....

Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness  by William Styron (1990) is the author’s introspective of one of his depressive periods over about three months in 1985. He describes how he managed this intense and dark period in his life – from emergence of the symptoms to the darkest of emotions, and to eventual healing.   William Styron (1925-2006) is the author of  Sophie’s Choice  (1979), adapted into the 1982 award-winning movie set in Brooklyn starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline.   In October 1985, William Styron was in Paris for four days to accept a literature award and to attend a luncheon at La Coupole restaurant. He is 60 years old. Instead of feeling elated, he has ‘insomnia and malaise.’ He shocks his guests by declining to attend the celebratory lunch before realizing the impact of his decision, and reluctantly attends.    This is his first bout of clinical depression ‘in the unipolar form’ which, he writes, led him ‘straight down’ to despair. H...