Objet trouvé: Street Ethnography - Paris

Abstract

This brief essay is part of a broader proposal about the city of Paris. It began in 2012 inspired by the relationship between the book "Passages" (by Walter Benjamin) and the photographs by Eugene Atget. At that moment and during a period of one month images were produced of streets, store windows, PASSAGES?, small corners. Three types of cameras were used, one of those analog. Based on and inspired by Atget's technical looks (also making use of a blind camera - GoPRO and a LOMO? fisheye camera) overlapped images were created in the negative itself so that the decomposition of monumental spaces could be evident using these images.

A sequel to this proposal took place during a wider period between March 2016 and February 2017. Based on photographic wandering through the streets of Paris, spontaneous occasions and casual encounters with unexpected objects revisited Jean Baudrillard's thoughts, highlighting the dialogs the city introduces. These also made constant the search of an existence or a dialog between the objects and its surroundings. Such objects seen as common, forgotten, discarded or interfered with can transform the photographer in a gatherer in the anthropological sense through the photographic pulses they create.