It often happens to me to wander about the city in an absent-minded manner, without a precise destination, without a plan defined beforehand when I have my camera in my hand, with my thoughts wandering here and there, jumping from pole to pole, like my steps.
But wandering does not mean distractedly, for it is precisely the absence of pre-existing plans that allows the eye to be alert and receptive to relate what the city has to offer to those thoughts that still wander below the surface of consciousness.
Most of the photos presented here were taken during one of these leisurely but evocative walks on the morning of 19 January and the others are the fruit of other walks in the days before or after.
At first glance, each of these images seems to stand on its own, unconnected to the preceding or following ones, just as it should be when photographing without a destination or a programme, except that it shares with the others a certain indefinite atmosphere of suspension, as if the City in the photographer’s head were also undecided on the path to take.
And one glimpses a path then, not real among the City’s well-known streets and squares, but metaphorical and arbitrary, between the surprised glances of a surreal little sitting room on the street and the prosaic farewell of an old woman with a shopping bag, passing by a man portraying nothingness, a strange metamorphosis and a tramp asleep under a mocking sign.
