I resided in Paris during the 1960s and 70s and recently returned to the city for an extended stay.  One of the social changes I witnessed was a shift in attitude towards the use of public spaces, in particular lawns and greenspaces, which were restricted in their usage for pedestrians when I lived in the city some thirty years ago.  The sight of people being allowed to use the lawn at the historical Place des Vosges and other public spaces of central Paris was entirely unexpected and thus intriguing to me.

While my initial response in photographing this phenomenon was to juxtapose the formal elegance of the rigorously symmetrical building and park architecture with the informal configurations of random figures on the ground, further development of the project led to an investigation of the underlying social implications. The ongoing prevalence of class structure and current economic burden placed upon Parisian residents, circumscribes the ways in which leisure time is used and may account for the relaxation of restrictions on park and greenspace usage, as well as other municipal initiatives like the creation of artificial ‘beaches’ along the Seine.  Whether indicative of decreased reverence for the historic character of the city on both the part of city planners and populace, or recognition that leisure space can and should be provided at no cost to urban dwellers, I felt that this phenomenon required significant documentation. That the sunbathers themselves are aware of the broader implications of their simple action, or the fact that not so long ago it would have been curtailed or forbidden, is a matter for speculation.

The resulting body of work thus reveals both a complex manufactured physical environment: the carefully manicured lawn within the urban architectural framework, and a social one: the people who temporarily inhabit or pass through this construct. To that extent there is a voyeuristic and almost anthropological aspect to the photographs and an intended immediacy to the images – the subjects were not posed or even aware they were being photographed.   While the interaction of groups of people, the unguarded moments of couples and the contemplative isolation of individuals recorded in the images are all integral, it is their context and social implications that have provided the impetus for this body of work.