The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. Paul Bogard

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СКАЧАТЬ cathedral,” he explains, he means not only its face but everything around the building, the lights of the bridge adjacent to it, the plaza in front of the cathedral. “The concept was to put the cathedral in the center of the island. And to tell a story.” For example, Jousse points out how the lighting grows gradually brighter as it reaches the cathedral’s top, intentionally drawing the viewer’s gaze skyward—toward heaven. And though pleased with the project, Jousse says he didn’t get everything he wanted. “I have made also a design for this garden,” he explains as we pass the dark courtyard behind the cathedral, “but no money.” He then offers a “what-can-you-do” laugh, lowers his gaze, and we’re off again, walking to the next stop, stretches of silence but for the crunch and splash of our boots in the snow-crust and melt-slop of the Paris sidewalks.

      Speaking of money, the city now spends some 150,000 euros each night for the electricity, maintenance, and renovation of its lighting, a quantifiable reflection of its commitment. But this wasn’t always the case. When Jousse took his position in 1981, Paris at night looked little like it does now. As with Notre-Dame, the city’s famous monuments and buildings were mostly spotlit, and many others were not lit at all. Over the course of thirty years, Jousse and his associates relit Paris almost entirely—more than three hundred buildings, thirty-six bridges, the streets and boulevards—all with the goal of integrating them into the city, being as economical as possible, and creating beauty. Before his retirement in 2011 as chief engineer for doctrine, expertise, and technical control, Jousse was the man in charge. His car even held a special permit that allowed him to park wherever he wanted in order to better troubleshoot, direct, or otherwise consider how Paris would be lit.

      Most visitors to Paris probably notice the beauty of the lighting, but they probably don’t notice how carefully that beauty is created—where and how the floodlights are placed, the challenges the lighting designers faced, the amount of energy used. That’s just fine for Jousse. In fact, he delights in showing me how he hid many of the projectors so that the lights become part of the building, and the building part of the city. He doesn’t want to draw attention to the lighting, nor does he want the lighted building to stand out from the neighborhood. On the sidewalk across the Seine from Notre-Dame, at the end of a long row of green metal stalls—those of the famous bouquinistes, the booksellers whose presence here began in the 1600s—Jousse shows me how the first two stalls actually house no books, hiding two spotlights instead. Anyone walking past the bookstalls would never guess the light on the cathedral came from within them.

      “Whose idea was this?” I ask.

      “This was mine.” He laughs.

      Jousse sees himself as a historian of technique, and a storyteller using light as his language. As we walk past the Hôtel de Ville he says, “Now I show to you my last design in Paris.” He leads me toward the Tour St.-Jacques, the 170-foot Gothic tower that is all that remains of the wonderfully named sixteenth-century Church of St.-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (St. James of the Butchery). Jousse used the story of Blaise Pascal’s experiments with atmospheric pressure as inspiration to develop this lighting design. “I want to make homage to Pascal. The light falls from the top, and when it reaches the ground it makes a splash.” And indeed, the light starts brighter at the top, fades as it falls, then brightens and spreads at the tower’s base. This blend of artistic thinking with technical solutions essentially describes Jousse’s work in Paris—to think about the philosophy behind the light, and then to make it happen. “I want that the building says something with the light,” he explains. “But the speaking can be different. Maybe it’s an architectural speech, maybe it’s a historical speech, maybe it’s humorous. Sometimes the speech can be spiritual. Sometimes people say to me, But nobody will understand what the building says. And I say, It’s not a problem, the building says something and it’s beautiful because the building says something.”

      At St.-Eustache I see what he means. From a block away the cathedral seems to rise from darkness, its bottom half left unlighted, its top half glowing subtle amber-gold. Jousse smiles. “For the church I want to be sure the light says something. I give the speaking to one designer, and the technique to another. And the first one must say, ‘I see the church like that during the night because na, na, na, na,’” he laughs. “It was the first realization with this way of thinking, maybe in the world. And his speech was something like, the church is like a battery of God-energy. During the day the church takes in the energy of God, at night the energy of God comes from inside to go outside.”

      As we walk closer to the church the bottom half emerges from the shadows, its stone arches lit by ambient rather than direct light. “When you’re far away you ask why isn’t it lit, but when you’re up close you don’t ask anymore,” he says, clearly satisfied. “There’s comfort, and there’s ambience. Everything doesn’t necessarily have to be lit. On the contrary, it’s when you leave things in shadows that you see the light better.”

      I wonder if the same could be said about light and quiet.

      The sounds of city traffic fall away as we walk into the Louvre courtyard called the Cour Carrée, a small square with a circular fountain in the middle, and on the three stories of sandstone and windows the golden light of some 110,000 small (4.5-watt) lamps (“the same number as all the other lamps in Paris,” Jousse explains). “It’s very beautiful,” he says, this time more serious. “C’est magique.” The effect created is that rather than the lights shining on the building, the building seems to be emitting the light. “The picture is fantastic. The maintenance is also fantastic.” He laughs. The energy for this one courtyard alone costs one million euros per year.

      We leave and cross the busy street to a bridge, Le Pont des Arts. “Et voilà,” Jousse says. “Another magic area of Paris.” Yes, this one a romantic pedestrian overpass made of iron and wood. Jousse says the challenge here was that on this slim bridge there were no good places to put light projectors. “It’s a very poetic place,” he says, “and if people have projectors in their eyes it’s not good. But the city says to me, ‘All bridges must be illuminated.’ So, I say okay.” He chuckles. Jousse solved the problem by placing his projectors under the bridge facing the river, and illuminated the bridge from the light reflecting off the moving water, thus creating a shimmering, beautiful effect.

      What does it mean, I ask, to include values of beauty and poetry and love when you’re working with light? “It’s hard for me to answer,” he says, “I’m an engineer, not a poet. But as far as love goes, I would say that’s true. Oui, c’est vrai. I’m in love with Paris.” He laughs. “If you work on lighting without having any love for what you’re lighting …,” he trails off, as though there’s nothing more to be said. Then: “The love of Paris comes first, the lighting of Paris is secondary.”

      For our last stop we take the métro up to Montmartre and look down onto the city, the softly lit white curves of the Sacré-Cœur church behind us (another of his lighting designs? Oui). The Eiffel Tower stands over the dark city, lit from within by three hundred fifty sodium vapor lights designed to mimic the amber glow of the gas lamps that once lined the interior of the structure. Only three decades ago, just one side of the tower was lit, all the lighting from spotlights stationed by the Trocadéro Palace. Jousse tells me that the energy consumption was huge, and because of the tower’s brown paint you couldn’t see any details. Then came the idea to light the tower from within. Since then, except for each top of the hour, when twenty thousand white lights sparkle the tower for ten minutes, or on rare occasions (briefly all in red for a visit from the Chinese premier, all in blue to honor the European Union), the lighting hasn’t changed for twenty-five years. “And for us it’s very conservative, it’s classical. It’s beautiful like a jewel, but it doesn’t change. But it could be worse; it could be a wedding cake. So, sometimes classical is good.”

      When I share my appreciation for the role lighting plays in the story Paris tells, he says, “If you feel that way, then I am very happy.” With this, Jousse bids me farewell.

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