Stand like a column
- 📍 Location: Axe Majeur, Cergy-Pontoise, France
- 📅 Date: 2022
Two of the white columns of the Axe Majeur, photographed close and from below, with a man standing on the steps between them, arms at his sides, facing the camera. The sky behind is graded from near-white at the horizon to charcoal at the top of the frame.
The title is the instruction I gave myself when framing: place the person so that he reads as a third column, the same verticality at a tenth of the size. He is centred, still, and deliberately not doing anything, because any gesture would have turned him into a subject and broken the rhyme.
A dark sky is what makes this work. Rendered in black and white, with the light behind, the concrete keeps its whiteness and the gradient above it pushes the two shafts forward. The steps at the bottom give the only horizontal in the picture.
These columns are the most photographed part of the Axe Majeur and are almost always shot wide, with all twelve in a row. Coming close and using two of them turns a landmark into a pair of shapes.
I wanted a portrait in which the man agrees to be architecture for a moment.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
