shashasha

“Belleville,” Paris-based artist Thomas Boivin’s reflections on the neighborhood in which he lives, is a series created from the artist’s lived experience and features places and people he encountered during daily walks. Located in the eastern part of Paris, Belleville is both exemplary of popular notions of Paris and at the same always in change, always in motion. Boivin’s photographs – portraits, moments, sketches and visual studies – depict the city as a messy, disordered but congruent state in which coexistences between different people, habits, social classes are made possible. His quiet, unobtrusive style seeks collaboration with his subjects yet still manages to capture private, intimate moments.

“A friend described my work as follows: ‘It neither compels the viewer in any one direction nor aims to communicate or inform a forced message of any kind.’
I think that is the nicest compliment possible.”
― Thomas Boivin in an interview with Fabien Ribery