Documentation of an intervention in a Paris metro station (Pont Marie - Cite des Arts)
video 10 min, remaining half of photo strips after participant chooses one of the two strips (sepia or black and white), Paris tube map with instruction slip insert.
During my residency at Cité des Arts, I became aware of a subtle yet persistent sensation in my studio: the faint vibration of metro trains passing beneath, especially at night, while laying horizontal. This underground rhythm formed a quiet tether between my space and the city’s hidden circulatory system.
I was drawn to the Photo Booth at the ‘Pont Marie – Cité des Arts’ metro station, just before the stairway exit. Each time a train arrived and left, the wind would lift the booth’s curtain, briefly exposing its empty, lit interior to view. This gesture resonated with the photographic act itself: a fleeting moment of exposure, a tension between concealment and revelation. As someone whose practice is rooted in photography, I saw in this booth a silent collaborator.
I stood in front, stopping and inviting strangers, commuters who had just stepped off the metro into the booth with me. These were spontaneous, brief encounters. I asked if they’d take a photo with me, side by side in the cramped, anonymous intimacy of the booth. A duplicate function was used, so they would leave with a copy, and I kept the other. Each photo captured a moment of shared stillness, as strangers, within the rush of transit.
The work reflects on the paradox of urban life: how we can be surrounded by thousands and remain profoundly solitary. The metro becomes a symbol of this condition people in motion, faceless and close, anonymous yet entangled. Through this act, I sought to create fleeting, human moments within a system that often erases individuality.
This project sits at the intersection of portraiture, performance, and chance encounter. It is about shared space, about being ‘alone together’, and about the small gestures that briefly rehumanise the machine of the city.
