The guided tour includes an introduction to the history in Saint-Germain accompanying jazz music from the 1920s, sharing traditional snacks that contain a sketch and a quote from the famous artists, such as Picasso, and more who have visited one of the cafes, and handing out black and white photo frames from the 1930s to the 1950s for our fellow classmates to find the right angle of the café from the present with the past and take a photo with them.
The A3 poster is an extra large deluxe version from the A5 version used during the guided tour. With the fancy huge poster containing a picture taken in 2018, a pair of hands holding the photo from the 1930s to the 1950s, with a cut-out hole in the center, you can try to match the angle from the present and take a new photo, adding a new layer to the previous frames.
The postcards came in the same sizes, providing the possibility of connecting the past to the present. This is another way to approach the past, getting back to writing postcards, perhaps sitting within one of the cafés.
This A4 hard-covered guidebook covers our perspective on the cafés in Saint-Germain, Montparnasse, and Montmartre. These cafés used to be the gathering places of artists, writers, politicians, excellent food choice served in reasonable prices. We strive to make the readers think what was there and what has changed after so many years.
The left-hand pages contain an interesting sentence, ratings, a list of famous visitors, general history, sketches that resemble artists’ works. The quoted text varies from genuine quotes by famous visitors in the 1930s to 1950s to satirical comments by customers nowadays.
The right-hand pages include in each set, one sheet of photo from the past printed on transparent paper, layered over one sheet of photo taken by group members, aiming to capture the accurate angle same as from the past.
Although these sketches were not included in the final product, I went to a café to sketch out the petit dejeuner I ordered. Fingers drenched in honey, eating while writing, I jotted down my thoughts while I was at the café. I hope to follow the steps of the great artists and writers who met the others in some specific cafés in Paris.
We stayed at the lab for a few hours figuring out what we could do with the book cover. For the guided book we cut the paper out, glued paper in. We printed the restaurant reviews and the black and white photos on transparent paper. Placing them perfectly aligned (the old photos on top of the new photos). We placed them into the book cover, all into the glue machine. For the poster, we printed, cut a hole, and trimmed the margins.
These are the patisseries that I have bought in preparation for hand-out snacks during the guided tour, including madeleines, croissants, and pains aux chocolate. Arya Savas and I worked together to place the patisseries into the paper bags she decorated.