Alain Soldeville

(in progress)
Paris, spring 2020: alone or in groups, people are walking along, heads bowed, avoiding eye contact. They don’t get too close to me or the other bodies that pass them, inhaling the stale air beneath their damp masks. I wonder around the capital, moving from the city center to the working class outskirts. I rediscover the pleasure of brisk walking and the feeling of my body growing tired. The most densely populated city in Europe has undergone a mutation: streets empty, tourists absent, terraces deserted. As time goes by, my exploration becomes slower and more serene. I now photograph details that I would never have paid attention to before: an empty courtyard, incongruous architectural elements, political graffiti… With the seasons following one an other a kind of resilience has settled in, beyond collective fear and multiple injunctions. After capturing the bodies constrained I now photograph the hedonistic ones: people gathering in the sun, couples embracing, high school students cheerfully calling out to one another.