Fifth element
- 📍 Location: Axe Majeur, Cergy-Pontoise, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
Four white columns standing on the esplanade of the Axe Majeur at Cergy, with the valley and the distant skyline behind them, and a couple sitting on a low block at the right of the frame. The columns are aligned across the upper third; the paving runs towards them; the two people are small and entirely at ease.
The title comes from the arithmetic of the picture. There are four columns, and the couple make the fifth element, the one that is alive. I framed deliberately wide so that the human presence would be almost incidental, because that is the true proportion of the place: it was built at the scale of a landscape, not of a visitor.
The light is clear and high, and in black and white the concrete goes almost pure white against a sky rendered mid grey. That separation is the reason to work in monochrome here: in colour, a white column against a blue sky is a postcard; in grey, it becomes a shape standing on a plane.
Dani Karavan laid this axis out in the 1980s, three kilometres of belvederes, a tower, a bridge and an island, aligned on the Louvre. It is one of the most ambitious pieces of public art in France and almost nobody outside the region has heard of it.
I wanted a photograph about monumental intention and everyday use, with two people having a quiet afternoon in the middle of a work of art.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
