From Balzac’s Comedie Humaine to today’s Streetphotography, passing through all the possible tranche de vie of Maupassant, Saltykov-Scedrin and so much realism, humanistic photography from Cartier Bresson to Vivian Mayer, and one could go on and on, one has never ceased to dwell on the abnormality of normality.
The grey cloak of an apparent usual everyday life frays and allows a glimpse of the paradox underlying the outsized characters that weave the plot of so much of the literature as of the photography of the last two centuries: comedy and tragedy ironically fading one into the other or vice versa.
After such a solemn premise, in the face of so many predecessors and noble fathers, I can only go on to claim a few humble sneers and a good dose of understatement: the human figures that populate this series are small and casual, characters only slightly out of proportion, without shrieking or fussing, immersed without a care in the dazed and unconscious normality of our days.
Only a few incongruent details or oddities in the context in which they find themselves operating highlight their inconsistency.
