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      ‘Good for the Soul’: Giant Murals Turn São Paulo Into Open Air Gallery

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      Officials in São Paulo, Brazil, once hounded graffiti artists and muralists, treating them as vandals. Now the city champions, and even funds, their art, and it’s everywhere and supersized.May 30, 2021SÃO PAULO, Brazil — When Eduardo Kobra started out as an artist, he was tagging walls in São Paulo in the pre-dawn hours with gritty depictions of urban life, always working fast and always on the lookout for police cars.At the time, there was no money to be made as a graffiti artist in Brazil, and the risks abounded. Passers-by routinely cursed at him, cops took him into custody three times, and he racked up dozens of citations for defacing public property.“Many artists in that period fell from buildings and died,” Mr. Kobra recalled. “And there were very violent fights among rival bands of graffiti artists.”That is a bygone era: Much has changed since Mr. Kobra first took his art to the streets of São Paulo two decades ago.He is now an internationally acclaimed muralist, and São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, has come to embrace — and even fund — the work of artists the authorities once hounded and maligned.The artist Eduardo Kobra in front of a mural he painted to honor the victims of Covid-19 in São Paulo.The result is a boom of art using the formerly drab walls of buildings as supersized canvases. The scores of freshly painted murals have softened the edges of one of the world’s most chaotic megacities, splashing flare, poetry and pointed commentary on its skyline.The art form has thrived during the pandemic, as artists found solace and inspiration under the open sky during months when galleries, museums and performance spaces were shuttered.Many of the murals painted in the past year have touched on the health crisis, which has killed more than 440,000 people in Brazil and deepened political polarization.Mr. Kobra painted a large mural outside a church showing children of different religions wearing masks. The artist Apolo Torres painted a mural honoring the enormous army of delivery workers who kept the city of 12 million fed when quarantine measures were in effect.While recent São Paulo mayors were at turns hostile and ambivalent toward street artists, the current administration has fully supported mural-making.Last year the mayor’s office launched an online platform called Street Art Museum 360, which catalogs and maps more than 90 murals that can be perused virtually by people around the world or experienced on an in-person exploration of the city.It’s easy to be captivated by Mag Magrela’s mural, “I Resist,” which features a nude woman kneeling, her hands in a meditative pose and the word “present” scrawled on her chest. A mural by Mag Magrela.A mural by Mauro Neri of a Black woman looking toward the sky, with her bright eyes wide open under the word “Reality,” is among several works created last year with the intent of highlighting racial injustice.“The experience of running into these works of art makes city life more humane, more colorful and more democratic,” said Alê Youssef, São Paulo’s culture secretary. “It’s good for the soul.”Since 2017, the city has spent about $1.6 million on street art projects. Graffiti art took off in Brazil in the 1980s as artists drew inspiration from the hip-hop and punk scenes in New York City. It was a male-dominated pursuit fueled largely by artists from marginalized communities.The scrawlings and sketches were a form of rebellion, Mr. Kobra said, by people who felt powerless and invisible in the teeming metropolis, which is Brazil’s economic engine.“I was raised in a world full of drugs, crime and discrimination, where people like me didn’t have access to culture,” said Mr. Kobra, 46. “This was a way of protesting, of existing, of spreading my name across the city.”Most of the artists who became prominent during the era when street art was still an underground scene got their training by observing peers rather than by attending universities, said Yara Amaral Gurgel De Barros, 38, who wrote a master’s thesis on muralism in São Paulo.“They learned in the streets, watching others sketch, studying how they used brushes and paint rollers,” Ms. De Barros said. “Most are self-taught, and they’ve passed on their skills person-to-person.”Kleber Pagu, a mural artist, lowering paint from a rooftop for a new mural in São Paulo.By the 1990s, the proliferation of street art added to a cluttered and visually overwhelming landscape. For years, São Paulo had few regulations for outdoor advertising, leaving much of the city — including many buildings with at least one windowless side — draped in billboards.In 2006 city lawmakers concluded that the city was awash in visual pollution and passed a law banning large, flashy outdoor ads.As billboards were taken down, muralists began treating the sudden abundance of bare walls as invitations to paint, first without permission and later with the city’s blessing.Those giant blank spaces were enthralling and enticing for Mundano, a well-known São Paulo muralist and graffiti artist who said the artwork displayed in galleries and private collections had never spoken to him.“I always felt uncomfortable with conventional art because it was mainly for the elites,” said Mundano, who uses only his artistic name. “In the 2000s I took to the streets with the intention of democratizing art.”The drab walls of buildings have become supersized canvases. Pictured is “Workers of Brumadinho” by the artist Mundano.In 2014, Mundano began painting the beat-up, drab carts of recyclable trash collectors, turning them into colorful, roving exhibits. The initiative, which he dubbed “pimp my cart,” filled the workers with pride. The artist later created a phone app that allows people to contact nearby trash collectors.“I’ve always wanted my art to be useful,” Mundano said. “Art can tackle the crucial problems in Brazil.”One of those, in Mundano’s view, is the tendency of many Brazilians to forget moments of trauma — a phenomenon at the heart of his work as a muralist.“Brazil is a country without memory, where people tend to forget even our recent history,” Mundano said, standing in front of one of his large murals at a busy downtown intersection. “We need to create monuments to the moments that marked us as a nation.”The mural “Workers of Brumadinho” is a homage to the 270 workers killed in January 2019 at a mining site in the state of Minas Gerais when a dam holding back sludge burst.A close-up of the Mundano mural, the paint for which was made with mud from the site of the Brumadinho dam disaster.Mundano traveled to the site of the accident in the town of Brumadinho, where he collected more than 550 pounds of mud and sludge, which he used to make paint for the mural. The mural, a replica of an iconic painting from 1933 by Tarsila do Amaral, one of Brazil’s most renowned painters, shows rows of workers, whose faces reflect Brazil’s diversity, looking tired and glum. Mundano said he decided to replicate the earlier painting as a way to underscore how little has changed in nearly a century.“They remain oppressed by industries,” he said.The muralist Hanna Lucatelli Santos is also animated by social themes, saying she felt called to depict how women show their strength.She discovered the unique power of even small-scale murals years ago when she drew an image of what she called a “strong, but delicate” woman in her living room. Suddenly, relationships in the household became more harmonious and the energy more positive, she said.Hanna Lucatelli Santos said her murals of strong women can “balance out the energy of the street, which tends to be so masculine.”“It sparked a more gentle way of treating each other,” Ms. Santos said.Ms. Santos, 30, has sought to replicate that effect on a larger scale by painting murals of women who stare down on the crowded city looking serene and mystical. Her creations are also a rebuttal to the way women are often portrayed in Brazilian advertising and art created by men.“You see women painted by men who have artificial bodies, are totally sexualized,” she said. “Those figures did more to oppress me than liberate me.”One of her recent works, a pair of murals on adjacent walls, shows the same woman from the front and back. The frontal image includes the words “Have you realized we are infinite?” The other side shows the woman carrying a baby on her back and holding the hand of a toddler.“I wanted to make people question how society looks at mothers,” she said. “And I know that a woman that size, a mystical woman, has the power to change the environment below her, to balance out the energy of the street, which tends to be so masculine.”A mural by the artist Soberana Ziza in the city’s downtown.Lis Moriconi contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro. More

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      James Prigoff, Who Documented Street Art, Dies at 93

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      In thousands of pictures, Mr. Prigoff captured the often ephemeral but complex works that were once dismissed as vandalism.James Prigoff, who after beginning his career in business turned his attention to photography, documenting public murals and street art in thousands of pictures taken all over the world and helping to legitimize works once dismissed as vandalism, died on April 21 at his home in Sacramento, Calif. He was 93.His granddaughter Perri Prigoff confirmed his death.Mr. Prigoff was the author, with Henry Chalfant, of “Spraycan Art” (1987), a foundational book in the street-art field that featured more than 200 photographs of colorful, intricate artworks in rail tunnels, on buildings and elsewhere — not only in New York, then considered by many to be the epicenter of graffiti art, but also in Chicago, Los Angeles, Barcelona, London, Vienna and other cities. It included interviews with many of the artists and even captured some of them in the act of creating their work.The book sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Mr. Chalfant, in a phone interview, said a British newspaper had also given it a less financially rewarding distinction: It said “Spraycan Art” was the second-most-stolen book in London. (The most stolen book, Mr. Chalfant said, was the similar “Subway Art,” which he and Martha Cooper had published three years earlier.)“Spraycan Art” came out at a time when street art had grown fairly sophisticated but the artists who made it were still regarded by many as mere vandals. Mr. Prigoff, in subsequent books and in the talks he gave, argued otherwise.“‘Vandalism’ may be a matter of point of view, but it is clearly art,” he told The Press-Telegram of Long Beach, Calif., in 2007. “Museums and collectors buy it, corporations co-opt it, and it matches all the dictionary definitions of art.”“Spraycan Art,” written by Mr. Prigoff and Henry Chalfant and published in 1987, was a foundational book in the street-art field. Those who dismiss street art, he contended, are missing its significance. That was certainly the case for the Black artists he and Robin J. Dunitz documented in “Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride: African American Murals” (2000), who were long marginalized by the white art elite, as was their culture.“Given limited access to the more formal art venues,” he wrote in the preface to that book, “African-American artists chose the streets and other public places to create images that challenged negative messages.”In a 1993 talk in Vancouver, British Columbia, he decried what he called a double standard in cities that continued to conduct a war on graffiti but allowed billboards for Camel cigarettes, with their images of Joe Camel.“You tell me what’s uglier,” he challenged the audience, “a wall of spray-can art or the cartoon character with the phallic face?”James Burton Prigoff was born on Oct. 29, 1927, in Queens. His father, Harold, was a mechanical engineer, and his mother, Fannie Bassin Prigoff, was a homemaker who the family said graduated from Syracuse Law School.Mr. Prigoff grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y., and graduated from New Rochelle High School at 16. He studied industrial engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1947. Among the positions he held in the business world were division president at Levi Strauss and senior vice president of the Sara Lee Corporation in Chicago.He first made headlines not for his photography, but for his squash playing. “Prigoff Triumphs in Squash Tennis; Beats Bacallao to Win 6th U.S. Title in 8 Years,” read one such headline in The New York Times in April 1967.“The Lion’s Den” (1982), by the street artist known simply as Lee.James PrigoffMr. Prigoff said that his interest in street art and public murals was piqued in the mid-1970s when he attended a lecture by Victor A. Sorell, an art historian who had been documenting the work of Hispanic street artists in Chicago.“I quickly found that documenting murals satisfied three interests that strongly motivated me,” he wrote in the preface to “Walls of Heritage.” “I enjoyed photography, I respected the community aspect of public art, and I had a strong concern for social and political justice — often the subject matter of street art.”Mr. Prigoff retired from the business world in 1987 and two years later settled in Sacramento. He continued to pursue his passion for photographing public murals of all kinds, sanctioned and otherwise.“Sometimes it takes a book to help us ‘see’ the artistic merit of places we drive or walk by daily,” Patricia Holt wrote in 1997 in The San Francisco Chronicle, reviewing “Painting the Towns: Murals of California,” an earlier Prigoff-Dunitz collaboration.Mr. Prigoff, who also photographed archaeological sites, viewed street art as part of a very long historical chain.“Go back thousands of years,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1995. “People have been writing their names in the damnedest places for so long.”One of his favorite cities for mural hunting was Philadelphia, and in 2015 he lent 1,500 images he had taken there to Mural Arts Philadelphia, where Steve Weinik, the digital archivist, has been working to create an archive of them.A work by the artist Futura 2000, photographed in 1986.James Prigoff“Jim was early to recognize the fact that graffiti is both legitimate art and ephemeral,” Mr. Weinik said by email. “He understood that the photograph was the record, and worked to document graffiti and murals at a time when virtually no one else recognized these things. His photography and his push to share it with the world helped to both preserve and validate the work.”Mr. Prigoff loved to travel, and he took pictures everywhere he went. One seemingly harmless picture landed him in hot water, and in a civil suit against the U.S. Department of Justice. In 2004 he was near Boston and took a photo of the so-called Rainbow Swash, a colorfully painted gas storage tank.“Private security guards filed a suspicious activity report on Mr. Prigoff simply because he photographed public art on a natural gas storage tank in the Boston area,” Hugh Handeyside, senior staff attorney for the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said by email, “and F.B.I. agents later visited him at his home in Sacramento and questioned his neighbors about him.”Mr. Prigoff became one of several plaintiffs in a 2014 lawsuit against the Department of Justice contending that, in its zeal after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government was overreaching in its definition of “suspicious activity.” The suit, Mr. Handeyside said, ultimately failed to change policy, but Mr. Prigoff thought the issue was important.“I lived through the McCarthy era,” he wrote of the incident, “so I know how false accusations, surveillance, and keeping files on innocent people can destroy their careers and lives.”Mr. Prigoff’s wife of 72 years, Arline Wyner Prigoff, died in 2018. He is survived by two sons, Wayne and Bruce; two daughters, Lynn Lidstone and Gail Nickerson; 11 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.Mr. Chalfant said that Mr. Prigoff had just recently sent him images he had shot of Sacramento during the coronavirus pandemic.“He took pictures all around the city,” Mr. Chalfant said, “of the emptiness of it.” More

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      Advice on Mammograms

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      Doctors at Weill Cornell emphasize their importance. Also: Immigrant children; flaws in the justice system; graffiti; clothes and memories.More from our inbox:Children at the BorderBetter Ways to JusticeDefaced Art? ‘How Could One Tell?’A New Life for My Mother’s ScarvesA debate persists over screening frequency for breast cancer — the second leading cause of cancer death for women after lung cancer.Njeri Mwangi/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Breast Cancer Centers Urge Early, Annual Scans, Countering U.S. Guidelines” (nytimes.com, April 6):We take issue with an editorial in JAMA Internal Medicine that said frequent screening of younger women for breast cancer can do “more harm than good.” As physicians who diagnose and treat breast cancer at Weill Cornell Medicine, we seek to minimize the impact of this disease, which continues to kill about 44,000 American women a year.We are especially concerned about the effect of such misinformation on the health of African-American women, who are more likely to receive a diagnosis of breast cancer at younger ages and are more likely to die from breast cancer at all ages.Covid forced us to delay routine screening. The devastating impact of the pandemic on communities of color risks magnifying existing disparities in breast cancer outcomes.We welcome research seeking to improve and personalize breast cancer risk assessment to inform screening. Screening mammography, while imperfect, is the best approach available for early detection and to reduce morbidity and mortality.Lisa NewmanTessa CiglerSilvia FormentiNew YorkChildren at the BorderYoung children were being cared for by older siblings in a playpen area in the border processing facility in Donna, Texas.Pool photo by Dario Lopez-MillsTo the Editor:Re “‘No Place for a Child’: Inside a Packed Tent Camp for Migrant Children” (news article, March 31):Countless Central American families and children have made the excruciating decision to flee acute violence, poverty and danger in their home countries, and now children languish in U.S. government reception centers. There can be no doubt that these are children who, mere weeks ago, would have been callously turned away at the border. But that does not mean we can’t do better for them now.We must ensure that children are swiftly reunified with safe caregivers in the United States and that those who have been trafficked, abandoned, abused or neglected, and those who are seeking asylum, obtain meaningful access to protection under our laws.Vice President Kamala Harris must receive the resources she needs to promote efforts to address the conditions that drive these children north. As children are processed out of places like the center in Donna, Texas, they must be connected with legal services so that they can get protection. We can do better as a country.Mary Meg McCarthyJonathan RyanMs. McCarthy is executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center. Mr. Ryan is president and chief executive of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (Raices).Better Ways to Justice  Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Excessive Punishment” (editorial, March 30):I applaud your suggested property crime reforms alongside other efforts to break our country’s decades-long addiction to incarceration. They should happen immediately.And if we’re serious about ending mass incarceration, we must also acknowledge the abject failure of making punishment, rather than safety and accountability, the bedrock of justice.Our justice system claims that punishment is a one-size-fits-all solution to such a wide array of needs as to be fantastical: healing for victims, accountability, prevention of future harm, rebuilding lives, safety for the community, a sense of justice and more. Inflicting more pain and trauma not only fails at those goals, but it also puts them largely out of reach.True accountability requires an acknowledgment of the harm done, efforts to repair it and concrete change that will prevent future harm and strengthen community safety.We’ll never end mass incarceration — and its egregious racial inequities — until we embrace this common-sense vision of justice that offers real healing and safety for all.Shari SilbersteinNew YorkThe writer is executive director of Equal Justice USA.Defaced Art? ‘How Could One Tell?’  Minwoo Park/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Defacing a $400,000 Painting, All Because of a Mix-Up” (news article, April 8):JonOne is a graffiti artist, which means that he paints things on other people’s walls, buildings, sign boards and the like. At the site of his work in Seoul (described as a “paint-splattered canvas”), he left paint cans and brushes. Did he truly not expect that this was an open invitation to others to add to the work? Weren’t they simply doing graffiti on another person’s surface?And yet JonOne claims that the couple who took him up on his implicit invitation “defaced” his work, which he likened to defacing a church. Defaced? My response, after looking at the “before” and “after” versions on the Times website, is “How could one tell?”Finally, does he not realize that the couple who added dark green patches were really engaged in performance art?David WinterAlbuquerqueA New Life for My Mother’s Scarves  Catherine Lai/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “We Wear Memories, Not Just Clothes,” by Chris Vognar (Reporter’s Notebook, Arts pages, April 9):After losing both of my parents within months of each other five years ago, I had to clean out the apartment they shared for almost 50 years.In my mother’s drawer, I found a collection of scarves, which I took, rather than donate it. When I now see my three young granddaughters (one of whom is named for her) dancing around the room or playing peek-a-boo with them, I feel her presence, and I believe that she would be happy.Ronnie SchwartzBaldwin Harbor, N.Y. More

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      Couple Who Defaced $400,000 Painting in South Korea Thought It Was a Public Art Project

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      The vandalism of a piece by the graffiti artist JonOne at a gallery in South Korea has prompted a debate about contemporary art.SEOUL — The couple saw brushes and paint cans in front of a paint-splattered canvas at a gallery in a Seoul shopping mall. So they added a few brush strokes, assuming it was a participatory mural.Not quite: The painting was a finished work by an American artist whose abstract aesthetic riffs on street art. The piece is worth more than $400,000, according to the organizers of the exhibition that featured the painting.Now it’s hard to tell where the artist’s work ends and the vandalism begins. “Graffitied graffiti,” a local newspaper headline said last week.Either way, the piece, “Untitled,” by John Andrew Perello, the graffiti artist known as JonOne, is now a magnet for selfies. And on social media, South Koreans are debating what the vandalism illustrates about art, authorship and authenticity.The artwork is displayed with paint cans, brushes and shoes that the artist used when he worked on it, one of the exhibition’s organizers, Kang Wook, said in an interview. He added, “There were guidelines and a notice, but the couple did not pay attention.”Some social media users have echoed Mr. Kang’s reasoning. Others say the sign was confusing and the couple should not be blamed.Views of “Untitled,” a painting by the artist JonOne, before (top) and after it was vandalized. The extra brush strokes are hard to spot.Organizers of the “Street Noise” exhibitionA few suggest that the incident itself was a form of contemporary art, or that the couple’s abstract brush strokes — three dark-green blotches covering an area about 35 inches by 11 inches — have improved the piece.The debate is notable in part because the crime was not intentional and the painting can be restored, said Ken Kim, an art restoration expert in Seoul who has seen the vandalized work.The painting is part of “Street Noise,” an exhibition that opened at Lotte World Mall in Seoul in February and features about 130 artworks by an international group of more than a dozen graffiti artists. Mr. Kang said the staff at the mall noticed on March 28 that the painting had been vandalized, and identified the couple by checking security footage.The couple were arrested but released after the police determined that the vandalism was accidental, the local news media reported. Mr. Kang said the couple told the police that they had thought the artwork was open to public participation.The couple have not been identified and could not be reached for comment.The artist, JonOne, said in an interview on Wednesday that he was disappointed and angry that his work had been “defaced,” although some people have said the publicity could work in his favor.“Art should be religious,” he said. “You don’t paint on a church.”The artist JonOne has described his work as “abstract expressionist graffiti.”Bruno BrounchJonOne said the vandalism of his work in Seoul reminded him of growing up in New York City and the feeling that his talent was not appreciated.As a teenager, he would sign his graffiti with the tag “JonOne.” His style later became more abstract, although he continued to use graffiti lettering as the foundation for his work. Now 57 and living in Paris, he has described his aesthetic as “abstract expressionist graffiti,” a nod to Jackson Pollock and other American artists who redefined modern painting in the years after World War II.Julien Kolly, a gallerist in Zurich who specializes in graffiti art and has exhibited JonOne paintings over the years, said that they often prompted strong reactions from viewers.“Some are full of praise and others think that a child could do better,” he said. “Of course, I am in the first category.”Mr. Kolly said that he wondered why the couple who vandalized “Untitled” in Seoul thought they could “intervene” in an artwork that was hanging in a gallery — but also that he did not think they intended to “destroy” it.“I can understand that people may have thought that they could, at the very least, do better than the artist by participating in this work,” he added.Mr. Kang said a decision about whether to restore “Untitled” would be made before the exhibition ends on June 13. The restoration could cost about $9,000, he added, and the insurance company may find the couple partially liable for the cost.“But we are concerned,” he added, “because there are many comments saying that the artwork should not be restored, and remain as it is.”The couple added the three dark-green blotches that are circled in red.Organizers of the “Street Noise” exhibition More

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      How to Remove Graffiti

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTip How to Remove GraffitiHumans have been marking up walls for millenniums. Carry the paint colors you’re most likely to need, but never get attached to a clean, monochromatic surface.Credit…RadioFeb. 23, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET“Graffiti is not going away ever,” says Thomas Corrales, 53, who works for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works training and overseeing crews of graffiti cleaners. Some 175 cleaners fan out across the city every day; in the second half of last year, they removed 3.5 million square feet of graffiti. Corrales grew up in a neighborhood where spray-painted tags were so pervasive that he became almost blind to them. Then one day in 1993, the unemployment office got him a graffiti-abatement job. Now he can’t help spotting even the tiniest Sharpie tags.Unauthorized paint on a wall can be many things — art, hate speech, social and political messaging, vandalism, the claiming of space. However it manifests, it often has a multiplier effect: Graffiti begets more graffiti, and tags will be tagged over. On occasion, when Corrales paints over graffiti, someone shows up to tag it anew before he can even drive away. Remember that humans have been marking up walls for millenniums; don’t get angry or take it personally. “We’re trained not to confront anyone,” Corrales says. If you ever feel unsafe, leave and come back later. Wear long pants and boots, preferably the steel-toed kind if you plan to use a water blaster (water sprayed at 3,500 pounds per square inch can take off skin). As you traverse streets, carry the paint colors you’re most likely to need, including gray, beige, tan and white. If you don’t have the exact color, use a spectrophotometer to measure hue and make a match. For walls, paint with either a roller or a paint sprayer. For stop signs, murals and most metal surfaces, use a water-based chemical remover mostly known by its brand name, Krud Kutter. City-approved murals are sealed with a clear coat that makes them easier to wipe clean. For the multistory spatterings that people make by filling fire hoses with paint and shooting it out with a fire extinguisher, you’ll want cherry-picker trucks. Clean sidewalks with a high-pressure water and sand blaster.Cityscapes are covered in layer after layer of paint, like an ever thickening skin. Never get attached to a clean, monochromatic surface. “You know that it’s going to be retagged,” Corrales says. “And you’re going to come back again, too.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Catch a Fish in Paris. Post on Social Media. Release.

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyParis DispatchCatch a Fish in Paris. Post on Social Media. Release.A new, younger generation of fishers is taking over the banks of the Seine, transforming a centuries-old tradition into an underground culture.The Seine used to be the fishing playground of older, working-class men who whiled away their retirement days at the river. These days, a younger and more diverse generation is disrupting the scene.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesJan. 11, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETLire en françaisPARIS — On a recent wintry afternoon along the Seine, a Parisian teenager took a fishing rod out of a narrow holster, stuck a glittery rubber fish on a hook and cast his line into the water.The fisherman, Eliot Malherbe, 19, was soon joined at the river’s edge by his friend Kacim Machline, 22, an art student. But first, Mr. Machline spray painted a greenish striped fish on the concrete walls by their spot on the river, in an renovated former industrial area near the Jardin des Plantes on the Left Bank.The Seine used to be the fishing playground of older, working-class men who whiled away their retirement days at the river. These days, a younger and more diverse generation is disrupting the scene.Many of the younger anglers were first drawn to the Seine by the promise of other adventures. The city’s quays offer some of the city’s prime skateboarding territory, and for graffiti artists, it provides areas with little traffic so they can discreetly spray their tags during the night.While fishing’s more sedate pleasures might seem to lack the same thrill, that’s not the case, said Manuel Obadia-Wills, 40, a former graffiti artist and skateboarder — and now a fisherman during his free time.Kacim Machline creating some art before fishing.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“There is a buzz, an addictive side, a repetition until you reach the moment of grace,” Mr. Obadia-Wills said. “In skateboarding, it’s the perfect trick. As for graffiti, it’s all about the adrenaline rush when you are in a forbidden place. When you fish, it’s about the most beautiful catch.”Like skateboarding and drawing graffiti, fishing in the Seine, too, sometimes flirts with legality. Many fishers go out after work or school — although France has officially forbidden fishing after sunset since 1669 even during wintertime.During the official fishing season from May to January, young fishers meet at certain spots — near barges stretching for miles along the river and under which fish shelter, or by the Canal Saint-Martin or Canal de l’Ourcq, where the water is calmer and warmer than in the Seine.Eager to find unexplored grounds, though, some venture to restricted areas like under the Bastille square at “the tunnel,” as it’s known, a mile-long underground canal covered by a stone vault. The city recently sealed off its entrance to try to prevent people from getting in.The “tunnel” is a mile-long underground canal under the Bastille square.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAlthough they are carrying on a centuries-old tradition of fishing in the shadows of Notre-Dame or below the Eiffel Tower, younger fishers have brought with them updated rules and codes.Foremost among them: The ultimate aim of the day’s catch is no longer about sharing a meal with friends and family. Instead, the goal is to share on social media close-up images of the pikes, perches, zanders, wels catfish and other species — and then releasing them back in the river.“Fishing is a sport and fish are our game partners, that’s why we release them,” said Grégoire Auffert, 21, squatting on a parapet of the Quai Anatole France facing the Tuileries Garden across the river. “You would never ask a tennis player to eat the ball.”Also, the new generation uses plastic artificial baits to lure the fish, not the natural baits like the worms still favored by beret-wearing retirees. The fish don’t swallow the lures, and fishers can hook them by their mouth cartilage, causing the least possible harm.The new customs are aimed at protecting the increasing biodiversity in the Seine. In the 1970s, there were only three fish species left in the river, but after decades of water purification policies, there are now more than 30 — although plastic bags, industrial waste and, lately, electric scooters with lithium batteries keep contaminating the river.“The milieu has been constantly improving and the coronavirus pandemic intensified it” by offering a quieter environment to fish, said Bill François, a marine scientist. He pointed out that this past year there have been fewer tourist boats running on the Seine. During the summer, he said, “we observed a very good reproduction.”Mr. Machline displaying  a perch he caught in the area of the Seine that connects to the Canal Saint-Martin.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesThierry Paquot, who studies urban life and teaches at the Paris Urban Planning Institute, sees the urban anglers as part of a push by city dwellers across France to be more in tune with nature.“There is a whole new range of practices heading in the same direction, like urban agriculture,” he said.He said a generation of young adults, suffering from growing economic precariousness, find a sense of community in the tradition of fishing, which they have transformed by an ecological awareness and by sharing their passion through technology.The fishing federation of the Parisian region has 8,500 members, all of whom buy an annual license for about $120. Add in those who occasionally purchase a daily license for $15, and those who fish illegally, and the total number of people who fish in the capital could be over 30,000, according to fishing store owners.“The number of fishermen remains quite stable, but now young people clearly outnumber people of a certain age,” said Marcelo D’Amore, who has been selling fishing gear in Paris for the past 30 years, first at a sporting goods chain and now at “Giga-pêche” — which means something like “mega-fishing” — a store he opened in 2016 in eastern Paris.The growing appeal of Parisian fishing to the younger crowd has drawn the attention of entrepreneurs like Fred Miessner, who says he noticed the trend in the early 2000s and nicknamed it “street-fishing.” With a business partner, Mr. Miessner — who also fishes in the Seine — launched French Touch Fishing, a fishing items wholesale company, and Big Fish 1983, a streetwear collection for urban fishers including hats, printed T-shirts and polarized sunglasses.Fred Miessner, right, with his business partner, William Fichard, in front of the office of French Touch Fishing and Big Fish 1983.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times“We didn’t recognize ourselves in the old codes,” Mr. Miessner said. “We didn’t wear plastic boots, military fatigues or closefitting jerseys. We fished, and after, we went to parties with our friends without changing clothes.”His brand and others like it sponsor young fishermen who have become social media influencers in the community. Mr. Machline, the art student, receives hundreds of dollars’ worth of goods from a company in exchange for posts mentioning the brand to his 4,000 followers on Instagram.Some fishing customs remain unchanged in the social media age. While sharing photos of the day’s trophy catch is essential, fishers tend to avoid making their exact locations obvious to protect them from “crabbers” — as they call those who identify good spots from pictures.And bragging about the size of one’s catch continues unabated.On a recent late afternoon, after a day roaming the banks, Mr. Machline caught a plump 15-inch perch in the Bassin de l’Arsenal, a barge port near the Place de la Bastille where the Canal Saint-Martin meets the Seine. Mr. Malherbe, his friend, captured the moment on his cellphone, then the fish was re-immersed in the water.“I always stretch out my arms in front of me,” Mr. Machline said with a proud smile. “That way, the fish looks bigger in the picture.”A lesson for children organized by the fishing school Naturlish on the Canal de Saint-Denis.Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      À Paris, on pêche, on poste, et on relâche

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyÀ Paris, on pêche, on poste, et on relâcheUne nouvelle génération de pêcheurs s’empare des berges de la Seine et une tradition centenaire se mue en véritable culture underground.La Seine a longtemps été le terrain de jeu de pêcheurs âgés issus des classes populaires, de retraités tuant le temps sur les bords du fleuve. Mais aujourd’hui, une génération plus jeune et diverse vient bouleverser ce tableau.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York TimesJan. 11, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETRead in EnglishPARIS – Une brise hivernale souffle sur la Seine. Eliot Malherbe, un jeune Parisien de 19 ans, tire une canne à pêche de son fourreau, plante un poisson en plastique pailleté sur son hameçon et jette la ligne à l’eau.Son ami Kacim Machline, un étudiant en art, 22 ans, ne tarde pas à le rejoindre. Mais avant, il ajoute la dernière touche au poisson vert zébré qu’il a peint à la bombe sur un mur en béton à quelques pas du spot de pêche, dans un ancien quartier industriel désormais rénové près du Jardin des Plantes sur la Rive Gauche.La Seine a longtemps été le terrain de jeu de pêcheurs âgés issus des classes populaires, de retraités tuant le temps au bord du fleuve. Mais aujourd’hui, une génération plus jeune et diverse est venue bouleverser ce tableau.Nombre de ces jeunes pêcheurs ont été attirés sur les quais de la ville par la promesse qu’ils leur réservaient de nouvelles aventures. Les skateurs profitent déjà de cet espace dégagé, qui offre également aux graffeurs des coins avec peu de passage pour peindre leurs fresques, la nuit, à l’abri des regards.Pour un œil profane, la pêche ne semble pas pouvoir offrir une exaltation semblable. Pourtant, Manuel Obadia-Wills — un ancien graffeur et skateur désormais converti à la pêche pendant son temps libre — affirme le contraire.Kacim Machline peint un graffiti avant de se mettre à pêcher.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York Times“Il y a un ‘thrill’, un côté addictif, un côté répétitif pour arriver au moment de grâce”, explique l’homme de 40 ans. “En skateboard, c’est la figure parfaite. En graffiti, c’est la montée d’adrénaline dans un endroit où tu n’avais pas le droit d’aller. En pêche, c’est le plus beau poisson.”Comme le skateboard et le graffiti, la pêche en Seine outrepasse parfois la frontière de la légalité. Beaucoup de passionnés sortent pêcher après le travail ou les cours — même si la pêche de nuit est interdite en France depuis 1669, y compris pendant l’hiver.Pendant la période officielle d’ouverture de la pêche, de mai à janvier, les jeunes adeptes se retrouvent sur les spots incontournables — près des péniches amarrées sur des kilomètres le long du fleuve qui servent de refuge aux poissons, ou au bord du Canal Saint-Martin ou du Canal de l’Ourcq, là où l’eau est plus calme et plus chaude que celle de la Seine.À la recherche de coins inexplorés, certains s’aventurent dans des lieux interdits au public – comme le “tunnel”. C’est ainsi que les pêcheurs appellent le canal souterrain qui court sur plus d’un kilomètre sous une voûte de pierre depuis la place de la Bastille. La mairie en a récemment fermé l’entrée pour interdire tout passage aux piétons.Le “tunnel” est un canal souterrain de plus d’un kilomètre de long depuis la place de la Bastille.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York TimesCela fait des siècles qu’on trouve des Parisiens amateurs de pêche au pied de Notre-Dame ou de la Tour Eiffel. Ces jeunes-ci sont les héritiers de cette tradition, mais ils l’ont mise au goût du jour avec leurs propres règles et leurs codes.Désormais, une belle prise n’est plus synonyme de repas en famille ou entre amis. Au lieu de cela, les pêcheurs postent sur les réseaux sociaux des gros plans des perches, sandres, silures et autres espèces attrapées dans le fleuve — avant de les relâcher.“La pêche est un sport et les poissons sont nos partenaires de jeu, c’est pour ça qu’on les relâche”, explique Grégoire Auffret, accroupi sur un parapet du Quai Anatole France sur la berge opposée au Jardin des Tuileries. “On ne va jamais demander à un joueur de tennis de manger sa balle”, ajoute le jeune homme de 21 ans.Pour tromper le poisson, la jeune génération remplace les appâts naturels comme les vers — que les retraités coiffés de bérets privilégient encore — par des appâts artificiels en plastique. Le poisson n’avale pas le leurre, et les pêcheurs peuvent le ferrer par le cartilage de sa bouche, en le blessant le moins possible.Ces nouvelles pratiques visent à protéger la biodiversité de plus en plus importante de la Seine. Dans les années 1970, il ne restait que trois espèces de poissons dans le fleuve. Après des décennies de politiques d’assainissement de l’eau, on en compte désormais plus de trente – même si les sacs plastiques, les déchets industriels et, dernièrement, les trottinettes électriques avec des batteries au lithium polluent encore le fleuve.“Le milieu s’améliore constamment et le coronavirus a accentué le phénomène” en offrant un environnement plus calme aux poissons, explique Bill François, un océanographe. Il ajoute que les bateaux pour touristes n’ont quasiment pas navigué sur la Seine cette année. Pendant l’été, “on a constaté une très bonne reproduction.”Kacine Machline exhibe la perche qu’il vient de pêcher dans le Bassin de l’Arsenal, l’embouchure du Canal Saint-Martin sur la Seine.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York TimesSelon Thierry Paquot, philosophe de la ville et enseignant à l’Institut d’urbanisme de Paris, les pêcheurs urbains s’inscrivent dans un élan général qui pousse les citadins partout en France à se rapprocher de la nature.“Il y a un faisceau de nouvelles pratiques qui vont dans le même sens, comme l’agriculture urbaine”, dit-il.Il ajoute qu’une génération de jeunes adultes, confrontés à la précarité économique grandissante, trouve un sens de la communauté dans la tradition de la pêche, désormais transformée par leur conscience écologique et le recours aux nouvelles technologies pour partager leur passion.La Fédération de Pêche de Paris et de sa région compte 8500 membres détenteurs d’une carte de pêche annuelle coûtant 100 euros. Si on y ajoute ceux qui achètent occasionnellement une carte journalière à 12 euros et ceux qui pêchent illégalement, il y aurait plus de 30 000 pêcheurs dans la capitale, d’après les propriétaires de magasins de pêche.“Le nombre de pêcheurs reste assez stable, mais maintenant on voit clairement qu’il y a plus de jeunes que de gens d’un certain âge”, explique Marcelo D’Amore, qui a commencé à vendre des articles de pêche à Paris il y a trente ans dans une chaîne de magasins de sports. Il est désormais propriétaire du magasin “Giga-pêche” — ouvert en 2016 dans le 12ème arrondissement.L’engouement du jeune public pour la pêche à Paris n’est pas passé inaperçu auprès des entrepreneurs. Fred Miessner a découvert cette tendance au début des années 2000 et l’a surnommée le “street-fishing”. Avec son associé, ce pêcheur passionné a lancé French Touch Fishing, une entreprise de distribution d’articles de pêche, et Big Fish 1983, une collection de vêtements pour pêcheurs urbains avec des bonnets, des T-shirt à imprimés et des lunettes de soleil polarisées.Fred Miessner, à droite, avec son associé William Fichard, devant les bureaux de French Touch Fishing et Big Fish 1983, leurs entreprises d’articles et de vêtements pour pêcheur urbains.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York Times“On ne se reconnaissait pas dans les anciens codes”, explique M. Miessner. “On n’était pas en bottes en plastique, en treillis militaire ou en maillot Tour de France. On pêchait, et puis on pouvait aller en soirée avec des potes sans changer d’habits.”French Touch Fishing et d’autres marques sponsorisent des jeunes pêcheurs, qui deviennent des influenceurs sur les réseaux sociaux pour leur communauté. M. Machline, l’étudiant en art, reçoit l’équivalent de plusieurs centaines d’euros par an de la part de son sponsor en échange de publications faisant mention de la marque à ses 4000 abonnés sur Instagram.Mais certaines traditions restent inchangées, même à l’ère des réseaux sociaux. S’il est devenu essentiel de publier une photo de son plus beau poisson de la journée, les pêcheurs cachent toujours la localisation exacte de leurs prises pour éloigner les “crabbers” — surnom donné à ceux qui repèrent les bons spots de pêche grâce aux photos.Et bien sûr, se vanter de la taille de sa prise reste aussi de rigueur.Après une journée à parcourir les berges dans le froid de décembre, M. Machline finit par attraper une perche potelée de quarante centimètres dans le Bassin de l’Arsenal, le port de plaisance à l’embouchure du Canal Saint-Martin sur la Seine, près de la Place de la Bastille. M. Malherbe, son ami, immortalise l’instant avec son téléphone portable, avant que le poisson ne soit rejeté à l’eau.“Je tends toujours les bras devant moi”, sourit fièrement M. Machline. “Comme ça, le poisson a l’air plus gros sur la photo.”Une leçon de pêche organisée pour les enfants par l’école Naturlish sur le Canal Saint-Denis.Credit…Andrea Mantovani pour The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More