Swimming Pool

© Franck Bohbot

Swimming Pool serves as a typological map of the photographer’s hometown of Paris, tracing the aesthetic contours of the public swimming pool from one end of the city to the other, from the surreally kitsch to the strikingly modern. A sociological and artistic exploration of this democratic space of leisure, the series celebrates the presence of these aquatic oases in a land-locked metropolis and asks what a place of play becomes once its players leave. In each brightly lit space encompassing a unique convergence of air and water, the absence of human activity assumes a distinct presence; the stillness reverberates, the silence echoes. The interiors are at once familiar and unfamiliar, their ordinary and utilitarian qualities transformed after hours into something far more dreamily cinematic, abound in hypnotic symmetries, space-bending distortions, and chlorinated blues of every shade.

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