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Tag / backstage

Backstage at the Paris Opera House in 1937

Just when I think I’ve seen all the vintage photos there are to see of Paris, I get lucky and find a stack of treasure hiding away in the archives to share with you. So today, we’re using our virtual backstage pass to snoop around the iconic Palais Garnier. Classical ballet as we know it today…

Notes on Secret Versailles, After Hours

Have you ever wandered throughout the sacred black and white checkered marble halls of Versailles when emptied of the violent bustle of tourists? When such chaos is replaced by the whispered confessions of a lost era that float upon the still air. Once a week, when the Chateau closes its massive gold-gilded doors to the…

A Janitor’s View of La Sorbonne University

I imagine that the school janitor of La Sorbonne University doesn’t have it so bad. When school is out and all the students and teachers have left, imagine roaming these halls and polishing the blackboards in classrooms that taught Voltaire, Balzac, Jean Paul Sartre, Marie Curie and T.S Eliot. Parisian photographer Ludwig Favre is not the janitor, nor was…

Backstage Fakery at Universal City in 1963

Universal Pictures was founded by a German immigrant, Carl Laemmle, who opened his first cinema in Chicago in 1906. In the early days, other studio chiefs laughed at Carl’s haphazard Universal City and nicknamed it “Laemmle’s Folly”. But the ambitious film pioneer would become responsible for creating the “star system”, rather than just using anonymous actors in films, and…

Inside the Secret Collections Backstage at the US Museum of Natural History

If I had the choice, I would always choose to visit a museum inside out– that is, take a backstage tour of what they don’t display, which in most cases, is much larger than what is actually on display. And we’re not talking about 2 to 3 times larger, we’re talking about secret collections that…

Backstage at Versailles: A Handyman’s Tour of the Palace

Robert Polidori has the keys to the palace. But not the perfectly-polished, museum-ready palace we’re used to seeing from behind the velvet ropes. In the 1980s, the Canadian-born photographer won a contract to document the ongoing restoration of the historic French palace, giving him and his camera lense an all-access pass to backstage Versailles. When…
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