Journal de Paris Series
2025The Journal de Paris series continues my exploration of the relationship between images and material form. In this body of work, fragments of photographs taken between 2019 and 2023 on the streets of Paris are transferred onto aluminum panels and linked together with glass beads and stainless-steel chains. The outlines of “a vase” serve as structural motifs, allowing familiar and abstract elements to coexist in a state of tension, forming a visual diary of self-editing and reconstruction.
Although these images originate from Paris, they deliberately avoid the city’s symbolic vocabulary—its landmarks, language, and recognizable stylistic codes. Instead, I focus on the ambiguous, unmarked fragments: bicycles and plastic bags on the roadside, water pipes at demolition sites, decorations outside restaurants, weathered wooden doors, and glass windows. These micro-scenes create an experience that is “culture-less,” not tied to the semantic entity of “Paris,” but to quieter traces of life and emotional residue.
Journal de Paris becomes a form of non-landmark image-making, shifting away from the mechanism of an “other-directed gaze” common in travel photography. Rather than capturing the city as a cultural icon, the series attends to the overlooked and the unremarkable—moments that resist narrative yet accumulate into a private, meandering record of presence. These works reimagine the city not through spectacle, but through the subtle gestures of wandering, noticing, and remembering.
