A City in Retreat: Les Devantures by Sandrine Marc (2018)

Sandrine Marc is a photographer and artist based in Paris with a specific interest in self-made editions. She investigates urban and suburban territories through slow, long walks immersing herself in mutating environments.

In December 2018, after the first demonstration by the gilets jaunes (“yellow vests”, a heterogeneous protest movement) a series of shops’ and restaurants’ windows in Paris was left shattered. Subsequently, the Paris municipality ordered shop owners in central areas to set up their own defence, placing barricades in front of their glass windows before new demonstrations would occur. 

Sandrine took three walks in the city, one between the neighbourhoods of Nation, Bastille and République, one between Trocadéro and Concorde and one between Châtelet, Opéra, Rue Saint Honoré and Madeleine. She photographed every shut shop window and documented an utterly unusual image of Paris. For a few days, the commerces were muted and expressed their defence through self-made barricades; instead of inviting and welcoming people from the street, they were hiding and repulsing them staging a confrontation. Les devantures (“The shop windows”) is a long series of photographs documenting this strange moment in time. The disappearance of shops also reveals how much the city devotes its ground floor to commercial activities, yet only their sudden disappearance makes this condition evident. 

Les devantures is currently on show at the Galerie du Crous 11, rue des Beaux Arts 75006 in Paris until November the 19th as a part of the beautiful show Paul Grund, Sandrine Marc & Xandre Rodríguez in the context of the Festival Photos Saint Germain.

All images © Sandrine Marc

Here is a view of the pictures exhibited in Paris:

A case of “Reality Imitating Art”: check Nicolas Moulin’s Vider Paris, a 2001 artwork as a series of images in which concrete walls cover several building up to the second floor of another Paris, transforming the usually lively streets into a mute setting.

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