LAURENT KRONETAL
In French photographer Laurent Kronental’s photo series, Les Yeux des Tours, views of Paris have been framed by the quirky windows of the Tours Aillaud, a group of residential buildings built in 1976 located in the inner suburbs of Paris. The photos were taken over four years and show not only the windows and their views, but also subtle signs of habitation in the spaces around the windows. Kronental considers the towers as some of the most spectacular of the Grands Ensembles, that were built in the post-war economic boom in France. For him, photographing these buildings is a form of home driven nostalgia, a way of satisfying a deep sense of childhood wonder and curiosity that fostered in him as a young boy who often watched them from a nearby shopping centre, questioning the lives of the people who live there.
Circular Window at Sunset (right) shows a wide, sweeping view of the Paris skyline at sunset. Many of his photographs were taken during sunset or sunrise, the skies saturated with warm, streaking colours, and this is no exception. The buildings are cast in a soft grey by the use of the natural lighting and are illuminated by pinpricks of lights just starting to come on across the city. The view is framed by the dark outline of a circular window from the building, which reminds me of the geometric shapes Victoria Siemer uses to frame the repeated elements in her work. The eye is drawn out the window, toward the horizon line, offering the viewer a spectacular view of the city Kronental calls home. The photograph is centralised within the rule of thirds, perfectly balanced with the negative space the window creates around the view. Kronental’s work is a fantastic example of the formal element framing but he also uses many compositional rules, including a consideration for the colours of the landscape, choosing to shoot at certain times of day that give the landscapes a soft tone, contrasting to the harsh, shaped border of the dark window. He creates texture beyond the pane by using the buildings create a pattern of blocky, geometric shapes.
Kronental’s concept is to display familiar scenes to him in a quirky way, inspired by his childhood memories of the place. I think windows give a sense place and are very symbolic. They encompass the idea of looking in or out at the familiar or unfamiliar, depending on their locale. I like that Kronental has specifically decided to use windows of a building that are culturally familiar to him, and would like to do so in my work also.
The camera is focused both on the window frame and the city beyond it, meaning a wide depth of field and a small aperture like F.16 was used to get everything in focus. This means a fast shutter speed or tripod was also used to prevent motion blur.
I really like the concept of showing windows in the home, safely inside, looking out at the massiveness and culture of the world.
Framing familiar British views like Kronental has framed his home French ones. I feel that using windows in my work can makes it feel like the viewer is being sheltered inside a little house in England when there's so much of the world out there, waiting. I would like to use similar soft pastel colours to Kronental, and I would like to photograph at dawn and dusk like he does to create these colours on the landscape.
"Fascinated both by the architectural venture as much as by its underlying utopian paradigm, I wish to invite the spectator to discover the intimacy of the housing and to find clues of human presence within this exceptional “Grand Ensemble.” - Laurent Kronental
