Paris of Paradoxes

  This series of photographs are double-exposure prints of structures and architecture in Paris. I tried to obtain pictures that in their whole can be representative of the city, not necessarily all the tourist hotspots, but the less photographed spaces as well.



I first travelled to certain destinations that were known to have unique architecture and structures, and began by photographing such landmarks in the “cliché” manners. As I familiarized myself with the locations, I searched for odd and undiscovered angles that had pleasing geometry or intriguing relationships. Sometimes, I wandered off completely from what I initially set out for and allowed myself to capture what interested me the most.


 
      The process of double exposure inherently combines or juxtaposes two subjects. When crowded together on the same page, two initially unrelated images may suddenly have a dialogue with each other.



      Indeed many of the resulting prints did follow this principle: la Grande Arch de la Defense sitting atop l’Arc de Triomphe, and an ominous scene from the catacombs overlooking modern skyscrapers. Jamming these images together creates a concord over a cacophony, order and chaos coexisting.



The modern and the ancient coexist in a strange way, crowded in an evolving city. Sometimes this discrepancy is resolved gracefully, like the glass pyramids at the Louvre, but something still feels amiss in the integration of the city into the modern world.



As I continued to print from my negatives, I found similar paradoxes beyond the time period of the structures. For example: the windmill of the Moulin Rouge fits perfectly into the Sacre-Coeur Basilica, allowing the contradictory concepts of vice/night-life and purity to create a harmonious geometry;



the preserved luxurious apartments of Napoleon III is a testament to the impenetrability of the elite social class, while overlaid the hallways of the biblothèque nationale de France represents the democratization of knowledge.



Finishing this series of photographs has made me realize that Paris is a city of paradoxes, yet these incongruities integrate in an inexplicably beautiful way.