FRANCE – PARIS
Making the invisible visible, the homeless wandering or stagnating in our streets, in this case those of Los Angeles: this is the mission admirably accomplished by Spanish-Swiss photographer Carlos Leal. Far from being documentary photography, his extremely spare, beautifully composed images have the force of a punch.
Elliptical, they never show in an immodest way, but only hint at the dramas played out on the sidewalks: Here, a hand plastered to a black wall; there, an abandoned cart full of bags and old clothes; here, a cloud of black smoke that we learn is the result of a pile of stuff burnt by a homeless man in the middle of the freeway; there, a man sitting against a wall hidden under a shirt acting as a veil (Ghost in the City, 2022); yet another here, buried under a blanket in a wheelchair…
© Carlos Leal
So many ghosts that have become the protagonists of our urban tragedies. A former rapper with the Sens Unik group, Carlos Leal is no stranger to the limelight, but it’s with great poetry that he shows the other side of the city’s fantasies of social success. A veritable mise en abîme of the illusory American dream, his service station (titled Oil Temple) shines brightly in the dark of night. A troubling – and very minimalist – chiaroscuro that speaks volumes about the torments of our modernity.
STÉPHANIE DULOUT
Carlos Leal – Fearless
Until July 29
36, rue Falguière, Paris XV