Apocalypse alert! In a few years’ time, Paris could well be abandoned and half-destroyed! But don’t panic, it’s all just the fruit of the imagination of two photographers and urbex experts. In the Ruines de Paris exhibition, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre present their AI-designed shots of a Paris with an end-of-the-world feel! See it at the Polka Galerie!
Marchand and Meffre, the urbex photography duo
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre are no strangers to disused sites and ruined urban landscapes, which they have been exploring since the early 2000s with their cameras in hand. Their practice combines the meticulous work of documentary filmmakers with the sensitive eye of artists. Their quest for sites has taken them to Detroit, the former capital of the automobile industry, where they photographed the faded remains of a city that was once so powerful, and to Gunkanjima Island in Japan, a former mining town that has been unoccupied since the 1970s.
Wherever they go, the two photographers are keen to immortalize, as if to keep a trace, this “past-present” that could disappear or be altered forever! With their latest project, on the contrary, the duo explore another temporality and project themselves into a half-fictional, half-real future in the heart of Paris!
Photos of Paris in ruins, the end of the capital’s reign
Have you ever wondered what Paris would look like in the aftermath of an unprecedented catastrophe? How would it look without its inhabitants? Without its traffic, in short, without a single sign of human life left on Earth?
This fantasy, worthy of a dystopian film scenario or a video game, of an apocalyptic future, the two artists have realized with the help of AI for Paris in Ruins. Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre took Midjourney, the image generation tool, and transposed their urbex expertise into a whole new dimension!
The fruit of this collaboration between their imagination and AI is currently on view at the Polka Galerie in the exhibition Paris en ruines. A series of 80 photos depict this emptied, abandoned Paris in the grip of nature and time.
With this project, the artists take their approach to the extreme, hijacking and deliberately dilapidating some of the capital’s symbols with striking realism! In this exhibition, you’ll see Paris in a different light, with the Centre Pompidou lacklustre and eaten away by rust, cafés and restaurants devastated and the Arc de Triomphe traffic circle deserted. These end-of-the-world settings will both frighten and captivate you with their realism and beauty!
This exhibition is also complemented by the publication of the book Les Ruines de Paris – Quand l’intelligenceartificielle prédit l’avenir ( The Ruins of Paris – Whenartificialintelligencepredicts the future ).
📍 Address: Polka Galerie
12, rue Saint-Gilles, 75003 Paris
📆 Date: November 8, 2024 – January 18, 2025
🎟️ Admission: free
Further information on the Paris en ruines exhibition