Architecture And Fantasy In Brutalist France

Eric Tabuchi takes portraits of buildings, showing them in isolation so we can best wonder why, how and who made them? Place his images side by side and you construct ideas of what we are now. It’s diverse. You think you know what Eric’s native France looks like and then – bam! – Eric shows you the things those oh-so civilised French build to live in and around. It’s not all cobbles, je ne sais quoi and gargoyles.

The place isn’t all dipped in aspic, a working museum illuminated by the occasional car-b-cue when the youth strive to remind us that not everything vibrant about the country is dead and dust-jacketed, or living in London. There’s not all that much high culture, soigné chic, constructed rudeness and adroitness to envy, sketch and flirt with in this new-build France. It’s just there. It’s brutal and easy to miss. Eric makes us look.

“It may seem like a provocation, but I am not particularly interested in architecture – at least not in that of great architects and cult buildings,” says Eric. “I’m interested in what humans build, whether for shelter, work, recreation or worship. Basically, what has captivated me for 20 years is the vast domain of anonymous architecture, which is the daily environment of most of the inhabitants of this planet, and which we do not look at it so much. It appears to us without any real quality.”

More: Eric Tabuchi h/t: flashbak