Waitresses from the restaurant ship at the foot of the Juche Tower
“These five young women are hostesses working on a boat operating along the river that runs through Pyonyang……One interesting aspect of women at work in North Korea is that factories employ only young unmarried women. They live on site in dormitories with access to medical facilities, saunas and other amenities, existing in a form of self-contained isolation within the factory itself. Similarly for roles such as hostesses or directing traffic at major intersections in Pyongyang, young women aged 20 to 26 - unmarred and conforming to the society’s established standards of beauty - are selected.”
Gladieu noted that he originally wanted to take a picture of a different man of similar appearance, but was refused permission to do so. It turned out his guide felt the man was too ugly. When asked if ugliness wasn’t a subjective criterion, the guide said “No, no. It isn’t subjective. When someone is that ugly, he knows it. If I had asked him to be photographed, I would have forced him to confront his ugliness and caused him to lose face. I cannot behave in an immoral way.” Gladieu went on to note that he began to understand the “almost pathological relationship to perfection”. For example, he was never allowed to photograph construction workers because they were standing by incomplete buildings - not yet perfect.
“In this photograph, I deliberately engaged with the poster in the background - a highly conventional feature in North Korea and also common in the former Soviet Union, and imbued with the full codified language of communist propaganda. The man, with his slighgtly vacant gaze, poses with the same characteristically proud nationalist stance”
The building of the museum is itself full of contrasting vistas, lines, angles, reflections (Linda disappeared to explore them with her camera).
Linda took some better ones, but this was my feeble effort. You can just make out the actual meeting of the rivers.
There’s a small park at the tip of the peninsula with an ONLYLYON sign to great boats passing up one of the rivers.
That evening, Chris and Marg treated us to a typical Lyonnaise dinner at Le Grand Café de Negotiants where I tried a typical Lyonnaise dish - Quenelles (a sort of fish dumpling in a broth that tastes like lobster bisque) , Linda and Marg had a sort of beef stew with carrots “2 ways”. And somehow I didn’t capture Chris’ dish
Best meal in Lyon IMO. We went to a “fancier” restaurant the next night, but the food was unremarkable except for the presentation of this smoked salmon appetizer:
A “rose” of salmon with creme fraiche and a tuille of dried octopus ink. Still the taste didn’t live up to the appearance. Seemed like the food involved a lot of work, but then was largely over-cooked. Didn’t live up to the reputation of Lyon as the temple of classic French cuisine.