Blind Spots (2019-2025)

I had a subway map in front of me, a colorful labyrinth of lines and dots, and on these dots, names that conjure up only vague images, that mean nothing precise, nothing tangible. My adult life takes place in Paris and New York: I live in the heart of these cities, and for a long time, I thought I knew them. Truth be told, I knew almost nothing about what lied beyond my immediate surroundings, beyond the city center. Since 2019, I have been exploring the boroughs of New York and the four corners of Greater Paris on foot and by bike to experience these landscapes that I couldn’t imagine. I plan my routes in advance, try to stick to them, look for visual landmarks to guide me, almost inevitably veer off course, take notes for later – until I reach the end of the map.

Blind Spots is the result of five years spent searching for these invisible cities and questioning their representations. Who produces this invisibility – how much responsibility do I bear? What deserves to be photographed – where should I place the frame? How can I represent these places which try to evade my gaze, and these surfaces where images don’t stick – from what distance? 

With a 4x5" view camera set on a tripod and low-sensitivity black and white film, I have to work methodically. This setup allows me to look at the city from all angles, upside down, under a magnifying glass, and yields extremely precise images.  I want them to be as faithful as possible to my experience of these landscapes, yet I am fully aware that they will never be more than a collection of subjective points of view – those of a stranger (in La Courneuve as in Ozone Park, I am an outsider, for different reasons). These images are very paradoxical: while they contain everything I have managed to perceive, they also show, in negative, everything that continues to elude me. 

All these questions and concerns are packed in the title of this body of work, “Blind Spots” (which, interestingly, in the singular refers to the portion of the retina which is deprived of photo receptors and cannot see). With Blind Spots I am trying to shift my focus and to reframe my perspective on these two cities. It is a strategy to avoid being stuck in one corner of the map.