Urban Raw Natures

The “Urban Raw Natures” is a logical extension of my previous work on scaffolding – the structural tools used to build contemporary cities. It was obvious that I should take a logical interest in the other components – materials, urban elements – that form the framework of our cities.

Like scaffolding, building materials are not intended to be permanent fixtures in the public space. Their presence is temporary: the scaffolding is dismantled; the raw materials are covered with a second skin, whose role is to hide the real – and unsightly – nature of the buildings. But these materials, with their raw appearance, are interesting pictorial subjects if we take the time to look at them differently.

Other elements that are indispensable to contemporary cities, but this time rarely concealed even though they are just as unsightly at first glance, are the cables and electrical wires that are the unavoidable agents of modernity. Here again, their primarily utilitarian nature can be overcome, and the aesthetics they conceal used in a creative process.

This section presents my work on all these a priori unsightly components, which are nonetheless essential to our cities, which are always striving to be more refined, beautiful and ‘smooth’.

Some of the photographs in the “Concrete Nature” series received an Honorable Mention in the Fine Art / Conceptual category of the ND Awards 2024 international photography competition. The winning photographs can be found in the “Awards” section.

Go directly to the series:

• Nature Concrete
• Modern Art of Concrete
• Streets Threads

With this ‘Nature Concrete’ series, one of the latest areas of work on our ‘ultra-urban’ environment, the intention is to bring nature and ‘green’ back to life, like an explosion of life, in what is now the natural environment for many of us, namely modern cities made of concrete and steel, these new artificial and excessively rationalised settings.

These creations prove that we can still bring the creative magic of nature to our standardised living spaces.

Some of the photographs in this series won prizes in the international Neutral Density Photography Awards 2024 in the ‘Conceptual Fine Art’ category. The list of winning photographs can be found in the “Awards” section.

Original digital photographs taken in the Paris region, France, and in Quito, Ecuador, from a single real shot, with a double vertical and horizontal mirror effect (without any photo montage).

---

This series, entitled “Modern art of concrete”, seeks to highlight the hidden material par excellence of our cities: construction concrete. This raw material, which is usually unsightly and almost always covered over, is very interesting to showcase because of the effects of matter, texture and shape that it creates… and creates itself!

The simple geometric shapes and raw surfaces with their sharp, flat colours in this series of ‘paintings’ can be seen as a free, contemporary interpretation – in the form of a tribute – to the Bauhaus style.

Original digital photographs taken in Quito, Ecuador, from a single real-life shot, with a double vertical and horizontal mirror effect (without any photographic editing).

---

This latest series, which began in Ecuador, focuses on the anarchic, sprawling and ubiquitous networks of electrical wires and internet connections, symbols par excellence of the modernity of our cities. Indispensable and unstoppable, these webs inevitably weave their way from the largest avenues to the smallest alleyways, metaphors for the nervous networks of the bodies of cities.

Original digital photographs taken in Quito, Ecuador, from a single real-life shot, with a double vertical and horizontal mirror effect (without any photographic editing).

---