Monday 15 February 2016

périphérique ou les grands ensembles

Photographer Laurent Kronental spent the better part of the last four years assiduously documenting the anchor residents of the large housing estates that began to ring in the Parisian suburbs from the 1950s through the 1980s, the urban veterans that have remained amid a mostly transitory population.
These images not only capture the grandeur of the architecture but through the personal stories of the seniors serves to dispel ideas that might have been formed and fuelled about blight and “no-go” zones, and while not presenting a false-face on the challenges that these housing projects have endured, suggest that the utopian ideas within the brick and mortar might not be altogether a matter of the distant, marginalised past after all. Be sure to visit the link above for a whole gallery of photographs and to learn more about the artist.