Paris, France
Un Regard Moderne Bookstore
A counter-culture bookstore like no other hides in plain sight in the streets of Paris.
Can a bookstore also be an institution? If so, Un Regard Moderne is the cathedral of international counterculture. Blossoming decades ago in rue Git-le-Coeur (literally “The Street Where your Heart Lay Down”), where Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs used to have their parisian stronghold, this bibliophilia treasure box is filled up to the ceiling with the most subversive, intriguing, and unusual art books, essays and comics that have inspired generations of bookworms and eye hedonists.
Named by owner Jacques Noel after the French avant-garde graphics collective Bazooka, this bookstore remains an active crossroad for independent publishers, underground artists and musicians - or anyone that still believes books are magnetic artifacts capable of transforming your mind.
The store itself, a two-room shop that can’t hold more than five people at the same time, gives the eerie feeling of being lost in Escher Daedalic structures arranged in a way that are almost anarchic. Oustider art, surrealism, fetishism, Japan import, graphic design, science fiction, fanzines, censored books …. No matter what your main interest is, you’ll always find a billion other things that will blow your mind and maybe change your life.
Know Before You Go
Metro St Michel ( 4 )The proprietor of Un Regarde Moderne died in 2016 and the shop was closed indefinitely when I tried to visit it in November 2016. Did anyone manage to reopen it?
