a street dancer in Paris, by Denis Darzacq
Winner this year, but strangely in the arts and entertainment category, of the World Press Photo for his portfolio called "la chute," or The Fall, Denis Darzacq has turned the uglier Paris into an aquarium of wonder. If it is an arts story, it's a powerful allegory of life on the French fringe. These photos were taken following the well-publicized riots in November of 2005. An appropriate commentary track is from La Haine, Matthieu Kassovitz's 1995 portrait of the Parisian suburbs that practically predicted the unrest ten years later. One of the young misfits in the film tells an allegory (while watching the lights go off the Eiffel Tower from a distant roof) of a man jumping off a building, and on his way down repeating, "jusqu'ici, tout va bien," -- so far, so good. Of course it's the landing that counts.
In the landscape of these photos, I get an echo of Atget...
(Eugène Atget, 'Church of St Gervais, Paris', about 1900: Victoria & Albert)
A sense of time far removed from Hockney's collages...
(David Hockney, 'Scrabble, Hollywood, 1 January 1983', V&A)
And the grace of athleticism at its best. Compare the link to Darzacq's work below:
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