Périphérique

What used to be a no man's land in front of the former defense walls of Paris, became 50 years ago, a ring road, «le Périphérique», an eight lane trafic artery that never sleeps. However, despite its appearence as a highway, it still funtions as a border between Paris and its suburbs, there is an inside and an outside. The city has massively outgrown its vanished walls but there remains a void of concrete between the center and its surroundings, still something like a no man’s land. The «zone», as it used to be called in the 19th century, varies according the wealth of its adjacent neighbourhoods. The North-East of Paris, where the present images were taken is one of the poorest areas of the metropolis. There is a raw energy circulating, a constant build up and decay within the many fallow spaces Périphérique is a melancholic look at the « in between » world where the walls still are plenty, as much in reality as in the mind. At the present state of this ongoing project, linking individuals to scraps of territory seems an appropriate method to dilute, deviate and reinforce the stories of the people who agreed to pose for the camera. It all becomes a methphor of itself.