Modern Paradise : The power of attraction
This series was the subject of a book published in 2024, and of several exhibitions in Paris, notably in a renowned gallery on Ile-Saint-Louis, and on the gates of the Cité internationale de Paris.
160 pages of photographs immersed in funfairs life, from Normandy… to Los Angeles!
“The funfair is an abridgement of the world, a universal melancholy poetry.”
Since Barnum’s invention of the “Freakshows” in 1871, the funfair seems to have branched out to form its own parallel world, an enchanted world of bearded women, daddy beards, mountain tricks and American fantasies. Since then, the forains have succeeded in preserving and multiplying these places of collective wonder, made up of pastiche installations of society as an abbreviation of the world, these modern paradises.
At once perceived as kitsch by adults, and marvelous by children, as a melancholy poem of the universe. With my eyes turned towards the warmth of nature and the soft summer evenings, I’ve spent several years in several source countries and books the furtive instants of this singular aesthetic language that makes up our popular culture and seems to escape the grip of time and fashion.
