Martigny

I know... I know... It's been too long since my last post. I got dumped on at work this week (Despite the picturesque backdrops, I'm spending a lot of my time in an office). Here's some pictures from last weekend. I spent Saturday running and biking and basking in the warm Genevese rays. On Sunday I headed out with a co-worker and hit up the Picasso exhibit in Martigny (Pierre Gianadda Fondation). The museum was fantastic. They had some wonderful works from Picasso. The real treat were the photographs and ink sketches. There was a collection of black and white photographs (by David Douglas Duncan) showing the man behind the man, Picasso playing with his child and talking with friends. The ink sketches were simply amazing too. They were like form studies, all his thoughts and ideas compressed into a few revealing sketches. The other exhibits held their own as well. Another photographer had cataloged the daily life of a handsome French sheep herder twenty years ago. There were pictures of the herder cooking over the campfire, teaching his wide-eyed son how to tend to the animals, flocks of sheep marching along empty dirt roads as the fog cascades down the ridge. There was also a pretty comprehensive collection of cars from 1895-1935 as well as an exhibit on Da Vinci's sketches and inventions.

Getting to the museum and back was just as much of a treat. The sky was crystal clear and we took the road through the mountains, into France, past Chamonix, and back into Switzerland. Mont Blanc is magnificent.