Younes KlouchePanamera

Recently settled in the French capital, Swiss photographer Younès Klouche discovers a succession of utopian urban planning projects, all linked by a grandiose vision of social reality, but which invariably fail to capture the real strength of Paris: its uncontrollable vitality. Panamera is the result of numerous explorations of the wider Parisian territory. These images provide a panorama of a European metropolis in which a precarious relationship is being played out between political ambitions that are changing the urban landscape and the people who live in it. The text, written by art historian Alexander Strecker, develops the photographer’s reflections by composing an ‘archaeology’ of the different urban utopias that have succeeded one another in the French capital, and highlights the particularity that these utopias seem to systematically ignore.