Circulation(s) Festival 2018: Indian “Bad City Dreams” – Exhibition

Due to fast-paced urban change, land became overnight the most sought-after commodity in fast-expanding Indian metropolises, and advertising has taken center stage as the lifeline of a market-driven urbanization. The uncertainty of the market pushes entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to extract the maximum short-terms profits.

In Gurgaon, the self-proclaimed ‘Millennium City’, developers and publicists go to any length to convince the middle-class of the need to invest in barely-built residential complexes. The quest for an urban dream is at the very heart of Gurgaon, a paradigmatic city for contemporary India, built from scratch by the private sector in less than 30 years.

As part of Circulation(s) Festival 2018, the exhibition Bad City Dreams offers an ironical and critical look into this new urban world. Inspired by the Indian tradition of mobile studio photography, photographer Arthur Crestani used backgrounds of artistic impressions taken from glossy brochures of real-estate advertising. By placing these new backgrounds in fast-changing urban spaces and inviting people from the street to have their portrait taken, different levels of reality are made to mash into one another. Facing the camera, migrant workers, villagers and small businessmen confront the visual reality of the segregated city they live in.

Date: March 17 to May 6, 2018
Venue: Le Centquatre-Paris, 5 rue Curial, 75019 Paris
Curator & organizer: curated by Susan Bright ; presented by Circulation(s) Photo Festival 2018
Photographer: Arthur Crestani
Links: http://arthurcrestani.com ; https://www.festival-circulations.com/artiste/arthur-crestani-2/