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In Praise of Chasing a Futile Endeavour
How a photography passion project in Paris changed my (commuting) life and drove me up the wall
For the last five years, I’ve been photographing ripped-up posters in the Paris metro. It’s a pretty pointless pursuit, if I may say so myself, and yet I can’t stop myself pursuing it.
It all began with a glance. While catching the underground during the dark days of the pandemic, I began to notice vandalised ads on the walls. At the time, as the number of commuters was at an all-time low, the torn-up posters seemed to stay in place for months on end, their rips gradually decaying for all to see — if anyone was there to see them.
Passing more and more of these ripped specimens, I eventually had the idea of photographing them. And why not? Some of them were weirdly beautiful, after all. And even if the photos were of the most ephemeral of things — prints destined for the recycling bin — there was something poetic about immortalising them, as if a photo could bear testimony to their existence long after they had disappeared.
So every time I spotted a torn-up poster in the wild, I would feel an instant jolt of excitement, before whipping out my phone and taking a photo. In engaging in this hobby, I thought I had found a way to transform the…
