Lomography

Le Zénith - Venue Of The Stars
written by wil6ka on February 24th, 2009 , 3 comments (2 votes)

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Last fall I was working with several German Musicians. Among them Patrice, a reggae-artist with roots in Sierra Leone and very successful in France. A very nice fellow. He lives now in NYC and Paris and is also together with another great singer called Ayo. I had a short glimpse on her, while sitting in his living room. We met for an interview in his favorite boulangerie and I let him play with my LC-A+ for a bit and therefore I got a shot from me by him. That is the new way to go: Hand them celebrities your camera, so that they make a picture of you!

Anyway, Paris loves Patrice and therefore the legendary Zenith is always sold out, when he is on tour. Le Zénith was built in 1983 and was revolutionary in its futuristic spaceship-look and also with it’s innovative metal stages, which could easily be adjusted to the needs of any artist and band. The sound is fantastic and they are working with large projections nowadays, which is quite entertaining.

By now more than 2000 artist have played there and the master plan of le zénith was spread all over France. Now you have several Zeniths in the whole country. But number one stays in Paris. During the concert I was shooting in front of the stage. Actually the securities are especially bad-ass in the Zenith. But the same guys were doing their job during a concert of another German band the night before, where I had been working, too. So they were exceptional friendly to me, even though my french ist very limited, because I was one of them now.

And there is some other nice inside info: There are around 6500 seats in this concert-hall. If it’s sold out, the artist will get that certain equivalent in money from the venue. But Patrice told me, that he thinks, that they leave in much more people, so actually about 8000 come to his concerts, but the revenue is sacked by the organizers of the venue. Suckers!
You get to le Zénith taking the metro to station Châtelet

Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Z%C3%A9nith
http://www.lastfm.de/venue/8825357
http://www.zenith-paris.com