Urbanautica

ARTHUR CRESTANI. IMAGES CONTRIBUTE TO THE MAKING OF SPACE

by Steve Bisson

«The relationship between places and images is political. Whether in Delhi or in the Paris suburbs, images are used to construct discourses on places and justify urban regimes of power, especially with regards to exclusion and segregation.»

Where did you grow up. Tell us about your background. What kind of place it was?

Arthur Crestani (AC): I grew up in Asnières, a 80.000 strong city only a few kilometers Northwest of Paris, in the first ring of the Paris «banlieues», where my parents settled in the mid-90s. As is the case with the Western suburbs of Paris, Asnières is quiet and affluent with a strong Catholic bourgeoisie. It is quite diverse socially, also featuring a mix of people with immigrant backgrounds living in social housing blocks in the Northern part of the city. While social segregation is enforced through the choice of private schools, I was lucky to go to public schools and have friends from a broad range of origins. Overall Asnières was unexciting but comfortable to grow up in.

And then photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?

AC: I got interested in photography while on an exchange programme in Delhi in 2010-11. I was studying social sciences back then with a focus on economics. Living in Delhi was a shock. I found a special love for this rough city. At first I used to walk around using the newly expanded Metro system as I did back home. Midway through the year I realized that cycling would be better suited to explore this gigantic city. It gave me a better sense of how places were connected to each other. I bought a bicycle and started photographing while going around. It was naive and spontaneous as I sought to capture the atmosphere of the places I visited. Sadly I was using a bridge digital camera and am despaired today by the poor quality of the images. I came back to Delhi for three months on the next summer and kept on photographing the new places I visited. I quickly realized that I was drawn to the themes of protection, surveillance and social control. I had learnt about the violent history of Delhi by then, going back to the influx of refugees from the Partition in 1947 and to the 1984 massacres in which 3000 Sikh people were assassinated in Delhi as retaliation for the murder of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Fear and paranoia have been ingrained in the lives of the people of Delhi since 1947 and it reflects in the city. Going back to the images taken at the time, I realize that they were influenced by this violent history I had come to know about. I had called the project ‘Delhi Mental Space’. After completing a Masters in urban studies in Paris in 2013, I chose to study photography to continue to engage with the medium.

© Arthur Crestani early shots from the series 'Delhi Mental Space'

© Arthur Crestani early shots from the series 'Delhi Mental Space'

You have recently graduated from the Ecole Louis Lumière in Photography. Any take aways? Any meaningful courses? Any professor or teacher you remember well?

AC: Studying at Louis Lumière gave me ample space and time to experiment with different techniques, from digital to film and alternative processes, while offering me the time to reflect on my practice and engage with other photographers. The most important part of the curriculum was writing my thesis about the representation of Indian cities in documentary photography since the 90s, as I got to meet many photographers while confronting myself with the tropes coming with the subject. Louis Lumière made me more rounded and professional, while giving me foothold in the world of photography. I have fond memories of the courses given by Jean-Paul Gandolfo on darkroom printing and alternative processes. I also have a special affinity with Christophe Caudroy, who teaches studio photography and was my thesis director, thanks to our common interest in Asian cities and architecture. We follow each others’ work with interest today.

What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking? How is the language evolving and impacting daily life of people and communities in your opinion?

AC: Looking at society as a whole I would say that photography has grown from being a visual language to becoming an end in itself. Social media, especially Instagram, has sacralized it on one end, while emptying it of its meaning through the way that images are displayed and consumed. I am concerned and worried that the endless flux of images and information that we receive may make us numb, and find the instant gratification through likes and followers to be a distraction for me as a photographer and for people in general. My position is ambivalent as I find the tools useful to communicate and discover works by artists and photographers, yet after the early excitement about it I try to restrict my use of social media to a minimum as I find it distracting and frustrating at times. I still find that photography on social media is a powerful tool to express repressed or minority voices and as such contributes to a greater understanding of others and to openness.

About your work now. How would you introduce yourself as an author or described your personal methodology? Your visual exploration...

AC: Exploration is the right word as I consider that my work is based on exploring spaces. I like to walk around the Paris suburbs in the same way that I used to cycle across Delhi. I am particularly interested in the aesthetics of places and the manifestation of visual cultures in the urban space, but also in the ways images contribute to the making of spaces, both real and imagined, in a process of hybridisation between the two.

The relationship between places and images is political. Whether in Delhi or in the Paris suburbs, images are used to construct discourses on places and justify urban regimes of power, especially with regards to exclusion and segregation. The different vectors and media used to this end interest me. My work is produced in reaction to the social and political processes through which space is framed and constructed. I am keen to include elements taken from contemporary visual cultures, as manifestations of vernacular modes of representation, which help understand a place and a society. Through my work I want to question the visual tools of social control. The image has proven to me to be a visual language I could understand. I first understood India through images. I am now trying to understand my own city through images too.

I discovered your work through the series 'Aranya Redux' that focuses on one of the most innovative social housing projects in India. Tell us about your general interest in contemporary Indian cities? Also could you bring some insight about this interesting statement you wrote: «the validity of an urban model in which the needs of populations are considered and the architect allows for the city to grow organically beyond his initial intervention»...

AC: As I said the year I spent in Delhi in 2010-11 was essential as it gave me the desire to understand the swooping changes happening at the city level in India. Delhi offered a glimpse into the urban future of the subcontinent, which is why I kept going back there. Indian cities today are places of invention. They also are highly politicized places, and therefore a good level to observe the tensions and contradictions of Indian society.

While I was drawn to some of the dystopian aspects of Delhi and its sprawling satellite towns, I always had the desire to also look at the more utopian facets of urban India. The project Aranya, designed in the 1980s by the architect Balkrishna Doshi in the city of Indore, was a good case to gauge the impact of experimental social housing against the backdrop of urbanization.

© Arthur Crestani from the series 'Aranya Redux'

The specificity of Aranya was the reversal of the usual top-down approach to the provision of social housing for low-income groups. It was designed to allow the residents to build their own houses on allocated plots of land, in keeping with the usual practice in informal settlements in India, while providing basic amenities such as running water, electricity and shared toilets. Technical help and building materials were also made accessible at a subsidized price. This was meant to ensure that the houses would be adapted to the needs of each household. This mode of self-building was inscribed in a very strict Master Plan, with an intricate hierarchy of alleys, streets, roads and public spaces, which was respected up to this day. It has resulted in a striking quality of shared spaces, used for various activities from washing dishes and drying up clothes to playing cricket and hosting festivals and cultural events.

Aranya makes a case for humility from architects and designers. Interestingly, it has been neglected in Indian architectural circles where it is considered to not be architectural enough. All but four lanes of Aranya were indeed built by the residents themselves. Of the hundred ‘signature’ houses designed by Doshi, only about 15 have remained intact while the others were modified to suit the needs and tastes of their occupants. These 15 original houses are government property and their occupants do not have the right to alter them, which they do resent today. The organic growth of the neighborhood also implies a level of vulnerability to outside forces, especially to financial pressure on land. I found that a glitzy condominium tower, the self-proclaimed tallest building in Indore, was being erected only a few dozen meters away from the original houses designed by Doshi.

In an interview with Eanna de Freine you said «I see myself as not only presenting the myths and histories I unearth, but also being an active participant in the evolution of their representation». Can you better expand this concept in relation to your work 'Bad City Dreams'.

AC: The Bad City Dreams series was inspired by the omnipresence of real estate advertisement in Delhi and by the exuberance of the message it carried. The ads played on the longing for social distinction and a luxurious lifestyle inspired by the West. I made the series in 2017 as part of my graduation project at Louis Lumière alongside my thesis.

Advertisement contributed to the storytelling of the rise of India as a global power, through the making of ‘world-class’ cities dotted with infrastructure and amenities comparable to those of the West. It played on the ethos of India’s growing middle-class and revealed the impact of consumer culture and the fascination for brands and labels. The ads were visually and textually appealing, while at odds with the experience of life in the National Capital Region (the administrative entity comprising Delhi and its neighboring cities).

I looked for a way to depart from the usual modes of representation of Indian cities, which were increasingly framed as postmodern clichés of urban hell: overpopulated, saturated and inhumane. There is at times a morbid fascination for Indian and Asian cities in general to which I had myself succumbed in my early photographs. Using the form of the staged portrait, while referencing a long tradition of portraiture, was an attempt at engaging visually and socially with the question of the making of the city of Gurgaon, the satellite city of Delhi where the project was made.

© Arthur Crestan from the series 'Bad City Dreams'

Your research is often intersecting with urbanism and architecture. France has an important tradition of investigating territories beyond the Datar experience. How do you relate to all this?

AC: I have a background in social sciences and urban studies and look at places through the lense of political economy, which is probably one of the reasons why India has kept appealing to me. I have now settled in Paris, however, and have begun working on Seine Saint-Denis, the Northern part of the Paris suburbs, a place of enormous significance to French society. It would not be far-fetched to call it the laboratory of the future of French society, for it breeds a unique mix of people of different origins, cultures and languages. It probably is the most influential place for contemporary French culture, while retaining an aura of danger cultivated by the mainstream media. It is one of the poorest parts of France but also the fastest changing. It is a very plastic and malleable place, is open-ended and has enormous scope. I am keen to navigate through the contradictory representations of this epicenter of French popular culture. It is an exploration carried on by foot, as I live just 15 minutes away from the Porte de la Chapelle, which marks the Northern border of Paris on the way to Seine Saint-Denis.

I see this as a long-term project divided into several chapters, each focusing on one aspect of the urban spectacle offered by Seine Saint-Denis, looking to deconstruct the mainstream representations attached to it. It will be a dialogue between the mainstream and the singular, between the extraordinary and the trivial.

You are the co-founder and vice-president of the non-profit 'Territoires Visuels'. Tell us more about it? What about the recent show you have curated 'Cities in Flux. Photographic journeys in urban India' in collaboration with Thierry Mandoul, co-produced by Territoires Visuels and the ENSA Paris-Malaquais...

AC: Territoires Visuels was created to develop the Cities in Flux (Le Temps des Villes Indiennes in French) project on Indian cities. The architect and teacher Thierry Mandoul asked me to design a programme based on the research I did in 2017 for my Master’s thesis. As the project gained momentum I realized that I would need to have a structure around me and I solicited friends in and out of the field of photography to carry the project forward. Our ambition for Territoires Visuels is to promote photographic works engaging with urbanism and architecture through transdisciplinary projects that create ephemeral platforms for people from different fields to dialogue. I curated the programme which comprised an exhibition, a study day and a cycle of conferences, all produced in collaboration with the ENSA Paris-Malaquais, a school of architecture with a particular interest in India. It took place in October 2018.

© Yamashita Takahio, 'New Order'

© Avinash Veeraraghavan, 'I Love My India'

I reached out to photographers of different backgrounds whose works on Indian cities stood out for their originality and relevance. I had looked at these works closely while writing my thesis and had met and conversed with some of these photographers then. I was particularly keen to present works that had been little or not seen at all in Paris and to feature a range of photographic practices. The ten artists of the show had in common the questioning of the presence of the photographer in the city, and the search for ways to engage with the city through photography. Their works spoke of the alienation inherent to urban life in today’s India.

© Shiho Kito, 'off C.G. Road-2, Ahmedabad, India, 2008', from 'Pikari' series

Three books (not only of photography) that you recommend?

AC: Mike Davis’s City Of Quartz. A seminal book on the political economy of Los Angeles. A fundamental read on surveillance and violence in the neoliberal city. Avinash Veeraraghavan’s I Love My India. A playful and irreverent visual journey through urban India. Dayanita Singh’s House Of Love. I have a fond love for her nighttime color photographs.

Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?

AC: I liked Mathieu Pernot’s exhibition at the Centquatre (Paris) of his work on the Santé jailhouse, made before the demolition of the jail. He documented the images and graffitis adorning the walls of the cells. It is a delicate investigation of the world of the inmates, their humor and their anger.

What are you up to ?

AC: Now that the 'Cities in Flux' project is over I am at a stage where I am defining my priorities for the year ahead. I am looking for resources to continue working on Aranya and extend the project to other experiments in social housing in India. I also want to go back to Gurgaon in order to complement the Bad City Dreams series with new images on the visual language of Indian real-estate. In the meanwhile I will continue working on Seine Saint-Denis.

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Arthur Crestani
Urbanautica France

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