Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong: Paris, Novembre

On the night of November 13, 2015, Paris was convulsed by a series of coordinated attacks by ISIL. British-American photographer Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong (born 1970), who was not far from the strikes, did not consider taking photographs, given the impossibility of representing such tragedy. Wandering the city the next day, however, Leong turned his camera downward to the ground, focusing on an aspect of the city we generally see but do not notice. At first appearing to be abstractions or even aerials or views of the cosmos, Leong’s photos reveal details that contain gravity in their apparent banality—from cigarettes left on the asphalt by mourners to the footprints and broken glass of the night before and the sawdust scattered on the sidewalks soaking up blood. Paris, Novembre is a portrait of a city at a traumatic moment in its history and an exploration of how that history leaves its marks on the city’s ground.