Art Of The Day Weekly

A taste for ruins

They are very much in fashion after seducing Hubert Robert and then the Romantics such as Goethe and Chateaubriand. Ruins have an inner beauty that is very touching - and not only the "noble" ones of classical architecture. A whole school of photographers, over the last thirty years, runs after the buildings in ruins of our societies. Very soon useless, they leave some impressive ruins! The former Soviet world, with its nuclear plants, its missile ramps and its Pharaonic convention centers, is an expert in this field. But one can see the same thing in the West with its palaces with frescoes (in Italy), textile plants (in Germany), mines (in Belgium), roads swallowed by nature (in Japan). The three other photographers brought here - Sylvain Margaine, Henk Van Rensbergen, Romain Veillon - are the subject of an exhibition in an unusual venue, the Espace Niemeyer at the headquaters of the Communist Party. Choose a convention day to be able to enter this incredible room with the twinkling cupola of the Central Committee. The idea that one day it could be on a map for explorers, in a city of Paris eaten up by the jungle, puts shudders down one's back.
• Temps suspendu, exploration urbaine, directed by Céline Neveux, Silvana Editoriale, 2016, 144 p., €25.