They look like scenes out of World War 3, minus the rubble: French photographer Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy’s Façades series reimagines what buildings might look like with their “buildings” stripped away. With only their façades still standing, the isolated buildings are masks of their own former splendor, townships and cityscapes reduced to the icing, if you will, minus the cake.
Says the artist, “The façade is the first thing we see, it’s the surface of a building. It can be impressive, superficial or safe. Just like during a wandering through a foreign city, I walk through the streets with these questions: what will happen if we stick to that first vision? If the daily life of “The Other” was only a scenery? This series thus offers a vision of an unknown world that would only be a picture, without intimate space, with looks as the only refuge.”
The wildest part is that these images are not too far from what a city in the midst of a total re-infrastructuring might look like: façade easements, zoning ordinances that require developers to preserve historic architecture by conserving building facades, even when entire buildings are demolished, are often the last bastions keeping districts from looking like the indistinguishible technotropolis in Her. Below, check out selections from Gaudrillot-Roy’s ghostly Façades. (Via Creators)
