A Date with Paris

Photographer Rupin Thomas breaks down Paris into its landscapes, streets and quiet corners

THE PHOTOGRAPH of a bespectacled man sitting on a green bench is displayed at the entrance of Gallery 1 of Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi. The man is at the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery — where French philosophers, writers and musicians are buried — but his eyes are glued to the screen of his phone. In another frame, an old Japanese man rests on an ornate Victorian wooden park bench, looking into the camera, much like his neighbour, a pigeon, which is on the ground. These quiet moments of solitude form an integral part of photographer Rupin Thomas’ exhibition “La Vie A Paris: A Study In Volition”, which focuses on one of the favourite tourist destinations of the world, the city of Paris.

Among the 50 photographs on display, 34-year-old Thomas captures the tombstone of the artist Mireille Albrecht, which is decorated with a colourful chair. “I have tried to break Paris down in the form of landscapes, street art, quiet corners and still life. The city harbours a lot of public spaces. Around the 1850s, Napoleon III appointed Georges Haussmann to modernise the city and commissioned a lot of public benches and public parks across the city. The first section on quiet spaces explores the corners where people sit to find respite and gaze over the city,” says Thomas.

At the 19th Arrondissement, the photographer captures graffiti on a public wall. It shows a woman in hijab painted against a pink background, and an African face done in a burst of rainbow colours. “The woman in a modern hijab ponders over how one should look in Islam and Middle-eastern traditions. The portrait next to it has features that are structured to look like an African man’s. The works raise questions about how to define a coloured man and why someone would show a representation of a face that is clearly of African descent but without a drop of black,” says the artist.

Delhi-based Thomas captures the remains of an abandoned railway Petite Ceinture, which separates old Paris from new Paris, and is home to a forest of graffiti and iconography created by refugees and the homeless. “There is a predominantly black neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris around the 20th Arrondissement where many immigrants live. In these neighbourhoods, one can find a lot of motifs where people are talking about their ghetto, where they come from and how they are assimilating culture there,” says Thomas.

The exhibition is on till February 25 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan,

35, Ferozeshah Road, Delhi

Slices of life captured by Rupin Thomas in Paris