This diptych was shot at the Hôptel Jardin de l’Odéon in August 2013 by Lasse Lecklin for PHPA. Another one of his series, Places to Stop, will be published at the end of the year.
“I am deeply interested in the relationship between man and his environment. I have taken different approaches to the theme over many years. I wanted to take a picture from the outside looking in, since I’m interested in architecture and urban structures, and also because it had never been done before for PHPA. It proved to be very difficult with the narrow streets of Paris. You can’t get far enough away to get a good view of a building. So I decided to invert the idea and decided to take the photo from the inside looking out, showing both spaces simultaneously.”
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
Lasse Lecklin
Lasse Lecklin: Places to Stop – 2010
The project entitled Places to Stop is a series of gas stations shot around Europe and North America. The nighttime neon lights on the road invite the traveller to stop. The gas stations become the places that are supposed to meet all the needs of a traveller.
Places to Stop deals with monoculture. Gas stations run by global companies seem to be very uniform, an example of functionalism. The form of the station originates from the quickly spreading American car culture mixing with the architectural forms of the modern international style of Bauhaus from Germany. Functionalism being the key word many present day gas stations still carry aspects from the era of the rise of the car culture in the 1950’s.
Unlike Ed Ruscha’s documentary photo series from 1963 Twentysix Gasoline Stations that focused on gas stations in California, this series has two points on a wider global perspective: Firstly it’s a question of globalisation and its effects. The gas stations have very little connection to the local culture and society around. And in the end all starts to look the same, in different countries and on different continents.
And secondly it’s also a question about an era that is coming to its end. Due to the oil crises and the climate change the individualistic car culture will be forced to encounter big changes in the coming years.
Close to the Bernd and Hilla Becher’s formalistic studies Places to Stop invites to study these monuments of a modern era that may soon be history.
The photographs in the series are named just with the name or identification of the station and country, as to show how all these places to stop – often in the middle of nowhere or on the outskirts of cities – lose their identity and become a universe of their own with no real name. Or do they?
