Broken shadow
- 📍 Location: La Defense, Puteaux, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
A man walking, photographed through a panel of shattered safety glass at La Defense, so that the entire image is granulated into thousands of small fragments and the figure survives only as a recognisable silhouette in the middle of it. The top of the frame dissolves into pure texture; the bottom is almost black.
I did not add the fracture afterwards. It was there, at eye level, in a business district that is polished to within an inch of its life, and I chose to photograph through it rather than around it. That decision is the whole picture: the subject is not the man, it is the surface between him and the camera.
Depth of field had to be set on the glass, not on the walker. Focus on him and the fracture softens into a grey haze; focus on the break and the man becomes a shape, which is what he needs to be. The light was flat and behind the panel, which is what makes each fragment catch and turn the whole plane silver.
There is something apt about finding the only broken thing in a quarter designed to look permanently new, and about the fact that it had not yet been replaced.
I wanted a photograph of a place that is perfect, taken at the exact point where it is not.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
