Exhibition in Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport

13/01/202325/07/2023 Michel Setboun

THE ART OF DARKNESS

Story published in peninsula magazine

In his recently published book “Paris Lumiére Noire”, French photographer Michel Setboun takes readers on a stroll around the streets of Paris through a series of iconic black and White photographs of the city., One series of images featured in Paris Lumiére Noire is entitled Paris Aeroport a group of eight photographs which abstractly reveal shopping experience at Charles de Gaulle airport, and which are showcased on pages 44-55. These photographs were presented to the public in Hong Kong as part of the Le French May programme and are also on display in Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle.

In the vein of his predecessors, Brassaï and Robert Doisneau, Michel Setboun invites the public on an intimate trip to the city of Paris glamorized through the contrasts of dark and

light in his book Paris Lumière Noire. In a veritable déclaration of

love for the City of Light, each photograph is a poem in itself. The photographer thrusts his audience into a mysterious atmosphere, giving rise to a feeling of rediscovering the city in a completely unexpected way.

“When Paris is almost totally deserted, I can’t help but

photograph, because for me, photographing is as essential as breathing. It is a chronic and incurable disease, a therapy, a way of clinging to life,” says Setboun. “I had this project in mind for a long time and during my increasingly longer walks through the city, my ideas took shape. But it is difficult to make a book about Paris without constantly thinking of the tutelary shadows of Brassaï, Ronis, Doisneau, and so many others.”

In the course of his many Parisian walks, Setboun revisited

The city, almost defying the shadows and light, and through his lens, Paris became a place of “black light”, a perfect contradictory way to tell his story. “I had in mind a photographic polar, a black series, as black as my ideas… I walked a little in the fog, frame by frame. But at night, I had Paris to myself; the deserted city belonged to me…I was hovering in a strange atmosphere.”

One series of images featured in Paris Lumiere . Noire is intended

Paris Aeroport, a group of eight photographs which abstractly reveal a shopping experience at Charles de Gaulle airport, and which are showcased in the following pages.

These photographs were presented to the public in Hong Kong as part of the Le French May programme and are also on display in Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle.