Mimmo Jodice : "Parigi"

In 1993, the Maison Europèenne de la Photographie asked Mimmo Jodice to undertake a photographic project on Paris. This work is being presented here for the first time.

Paris and the Eiffel Tower. In places like these, it's difficult to know how to act. How should we look at them? How should we move through them? How should we approach them? More to the point, how can we cope with being swamped by the tidal wave of sophisticated images and snapshots of Paris that we see every day wherever we happen to be, reassuring us that the City of Light is still there, still the same, still available to us?

When I set out on my visual journey, I decided not to avoid the old clichés. I felt I needed to take a new look at superficial icons like the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Pompidou Centre, the Trocadéro, the Seine and the Invalides. I wanted to free them from the sacred and mercantile aura that keeps them prisoner. My journey brought me to a fin de siècle Metropolis, a post-modern Paris interacting freely and openly with its historical counterpart. In the same spirit of total freedom, I have combined images of these two 'souls' of Paris; the result is something of a dual confrontation. In this Babel of the third millenium, these anonymously similar locations are, quite literally, commonplace.

The exhibition and the book that goes with it are intended as a sort of illustrated guide to Paris, in which each location, whether old or modern, is looked at as if for the first time. I have tried to describe the city in a way that makes it difficult to recognize despite presenting it via its most familiar landmarks. These photos no doubt create a feeling of discomfort and rejection, but the intention is to cast aside the picture-postcard imagery which deadens our experience of certain cities. Photography turns these 'common places' into places that are new to us : Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

Mimmo Jodice