As the Sun Sets, a Parisian’s Masterpiece Comes to Life
from the NY Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: December 23, 2006
FRANÇOIS JOUSSE paced along the south roof of Notre-Dame, chain-smoking French cigarillos as he waited for darkness to fall.
Suddenly, the southern facade of the cathedral lit up, its pillars, gargoyles and flying buttresses adorned in white.
“Ah, this gives me such great pleasure!” he said, warming his hands in one of the spotlight canisters. “I truly am blessed with the most splendid job.”
Indeed, Mr. Jousse, a 64-year-old engineer, is the troubleshooter for the City of Light. As chief engineer for doctrine, expertise and technical control, he is responsible for lighting 300 of the monuments, official buildings, bridges and boulevards of the French capital.
Working with a staff of 30 decorative lighting specialists at a City Hall annex, Mr. Jousse helps create new lighting projects, lectures experts, negotiates with powerful players like the Roman Catholic Church and resolves technical problems at sites throughout the city.
One recent evening, Mr. Jousse was summoned urgently to an alleyway filled with garbage in a gritty neighborhood in the 19th Arrondissement. He had tried to mount a projector to shine one of his creations — images of six decorative windows he had photographed — onto a bare concrete wall there.
One was half-opened, with a red drape; another showed the silhouette of a black cat from an iconic late 19th-century poster
But the images needed to be enlarged to match the real windows nearby. The deputy mayor of the neighborhood wanted the wall ready for Christmas. After a struggle to mount a different lens, he settled on a temporary compromise: the windows were enlarged, but two of them had to go because the existing lens could accommodate only four of that size.
for the rest of the story including an audio slide show, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/world/europe/23jousse.html?ex=1175227200&en=ce42d7468a63c6a9&ei=5070
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: December 23, 2006
FRANÇOIS JOUSSE paced along the south roof of Notre-Dame, chain-smoking French cigarillos as he waited for darkness to fall.
Suddenly, the southern facade of the cathedral lit up, its pillars, gargoyles and flying buttresses adorned in white.
“Ah, this gives me such great pleasure!” he said, warming his hands in one of the spotlight canisters. “I truly am blessed with the most splendid job.”
Indeed, Mr. Jousse, a 64-year-old engineer, is the troubleshooter for the City of Light. As chief engineer for doctrine, expertise and technical control, he is responsible for lighting 300 of the monuments, official buildings, bridges and boulevards of the French capital.
Working with a staff of 30 decorative lighting specialists at a City Hall annex, Mr. Jousse helps create new lighting projects, lectures experts, negotiates with powerful players like the Roman Catholic Church and resolves technical problems at sites throughout the city.
One recent evening, Mr. Jousse was summoned urgently to an alleyway filled with garbage in a gritty neighborhood in the 19th Arrondissement. He had tried to mount a projector to shine one of his creations — images of six decorative windows he had photographed — onto a bare concrete wall there.
One was half-opened, with a red drape; another showed the silhouette of a black cat from an iconic late 19th-century poster
But the images needed to be enlarged to match the real windows nearby. The deputy mayor of the neighborhood wanted the wall ready for Christmas. After a struggle to mount a different lens, he settled on a temporary compromise: the windows were enlarged, but two of them had to go because the existing lens could accommodate only four of that size.
for the rest of the story including an audio slide show, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/world/europe/23jousse.html?ex=1175227200&en=ce42d7468a63c6a9&ei=5070
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