The City as Portrait
Chiara Desbordes: How did you come to photography?
Laurent Kronental: I originally followed a very different path. After completing my studies in business, becoming a professional photographer was never something I had imagined. During a six-month stay in China, I carried only a small camera with me, mainly to capture travel snapshots. It was there that I started experimenting with photography and unexpectedly discovered a genuine passion for it. The intense visual and cultural experience in China sparked a curiosity and sense of wonder in me that I hadn’t felt before. Looking back, this fascination wasn’t coincidental. Even as a child, I was deeply connected to images – especially a book about Hong Kong that my parents had given me. That almost surreal cityscape left a lasting impression. Often, we don’t consciously realize how much certain places or images shape us, but they quietly become part of our inner world and later influence our life choices.
Can you tell us about your main photographic projects and what characterises them?
Laurent Kronental: From 2011 to 2015, I worked on Souvenir d’un futur, a series portraying people living in large housing estates. This project was about capturing a sense of time and place, reflecting the hopes and challenges embodied in those environments. From 2015 to 2017, I created Les Yeux des Tours, which explored the intimacy of residents through their windows – symbols of the boundary between private and public spaces. I was fascinated by the idea of a typology that showed how these two worlds coexist and interact. My latest project, Cité Oasis (2019–2023), was a collaboration with a close friend, Charly Broyez. This series focuses on the architecture of Jean Balladur in southern France. Unlike the dense housing estates, here nature is omnipresent, almost like a tropical jungle enveloping the buildings. La Grande-Motte is designed as a city-park, with about 70 percent of its surface dedicated to nature and an emphasis on sustainable, pedestrian- and bike-friendly mobility. This urban vision, reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh or Niemeyer’s works, incorporates symbolic and even mystical details, offering a fascinating reflection on what the city of tomorrow could look like.
What does your creative process look like?
Laurent Kronental: My creative process blends observation, preparation, and intuition. I’m deeply fascinated by cities where architecture, atmosphere, light, and people combine to create a unique energy. This sense of wonder fuels my desire to capture and share these moments through images. The process differs depending on the scale of the project. For instance, when photographing Ricardo Bofill’s housing estates, I’m often struck by their strangeness and beauty. I push myself to explore how far I can extend my perception and framing. I do extensive scouting, especially because I worked with analog film for many years. Every shot counted and demanded careful planning, which became a valuable discipline. It taught me to consciously choose what to include and exclude from the frame, shaping the narrative of the image. Often, my aim is to transport the viewer into another reality – a reimagined world created through color, light, composition, and even the time of day.
What role do staging and fiction play in your work?
Laurent Kronental: Staging plays an important role and is carefully planned beforehand. Once I choose a location, I think deeply about the composition, often seeking unique viewpoints that require climbing rooftops or accessing hardto-reach spots to offer rarely seen or even unique perspectives. Gaining the trust of residents is a crucial first step, especially in sensitive neighborhoods. For early series like Souvenir d’un futur or Les Yeux des Tours, I was accompanied by locals to ensure safety and build connections. Engaging with people is essential. Photographing people requires time and patience since many hesitate or refuse. It’s a careful observational process, somewhat like painting, where I decide in advance how to placeindividuals within the frame to create a strong, thoughtful image. Alongside this deliberate approach, I also use my phone or a light analog camera as a kind of notebook, allowing me to move around the subject freely and capture more spontaneous shots.
Do you actively seek out locations to photograph, or do you sometimes discover them by chance?
Laurent Kronental: I know Paris and its surroundings quite well, so it’s rare that I stumble upon completely unknown neighborhoods by accident. However, even in familiar places, repeated visits reveal new details. Research is a vital part of my process. I use online tools like Google Street View and 360° images to scout locations virtually. I also dive into archives, books, and amateur photos, which often uncover forgotten or invisible aspects of the city. This blend of reality and imagination is central to my vision of the city as a place hovering between science fiction and reality, aiming to disorient the viewer’s reference points and create an immersive, subjective experience.
Architecture plays a major role in your work. What role exactly? Why this fascination?
Laurent Kronental: For me, architecture is deeply linked to personal experience and evolves with it. I’m very human-focused, and people often tell me that my photos express empathy, kindness, even love, despite sometimes futuristic or dystopian settings. This duality raises an interesting question: am I more interested in the city itself or its inhabitants? Perhaps in recent years, I have needed to reconnect with the city as a living, organic presence. Photographing architecture is like making a portrait. I perceive silhouettes and lives in these neighborhoods even without always talking to residents. Seeing lights in windows at night sparks my imagination about the families behind them. Often, I then meet with residents to understand their life stories, choices, and connections to the neighborhood. Architecture is a subject that deeply inhabits me, a medium through which I tell human stories as much as spatial ones.
Your images often evoke a sense of solitude or silence. Is this a reflection of your perception of these spaces?
Laurent Kronental: Yes, this sense of solitude is intentional. Paris and its suburbs are bustling places, but I choose to photograph at times when spaces are nearly empty. For Souvenir d’un futur, I aimed to create an almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere, where the last remaining inhabitants are elderly people. This generation, often marginalized, interests me deeply. They witnessed the construction of these futuristic 1970s and 80s buildings that once represented visions of the future, now largely abandoned. I seek to highlight these discreet figures, giving them a central place in a silent, suspended world. The absence of crowds, cars, or modern elements adds to a timeless, sometimes dystopian cinematic feel. This solitude also evokes a certain melancholy, inspired by the fragile connections between generations in contemporary society.
You have often photographed brutalist and postmodern architecture. Do you think photography can help preserve these threatened or forgotten buildings?
Laurent Kronental: Absolutely. Photography, like other arts, plays a crucial role in documenting and bearing witness to these architectures. For example, Ricardo Bofill’s Espaces d’Abraxas inspired cult films like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil in the 1980s. More recently, my work has brought renewed attention to these often overlooked neighborhoods. Films like Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine in the 1990s revealed how isolated and marginalized some large housing estates can be. My project continues this visual tradition, reminding us of the complex realities of the Parisian suburbs. Through the international circulation of my images in the press and popular culture, I hope these places are seen differently. Such a shift in perspective can encourage recognition and, perhaps, preservation.
