Cyrus Cornut has photographed with a 4x5 chamber the Chinese city of Chongqing, undergoing one of the world’s highest demographic and economic growth rates with its population of 34 million. Also known as the “capital of fog” due to its natural mist and to the endemic pollution that has accompanied its rapid development. Working with a chamber, the photographer, architect by training, takes a contemplative look at the city attentive to the signs of the urban landscape explosion in Asia. 

“He also lingered on the residents, who provide the human scale, and particularly on former farmers who are resisting by appropriating the tiniest cracks to cultivate their vegetables, who continue to fish or swim in the waters of the Yangzi or its tributary the Jialing, as though nothing were amiss. His images perfectly describe the ambiguities of the modern world and the glut of limitless economic development. ”, as Sylvie Hugues underlines in her essay, without imposing a particular message or politic view. These urban photographs, with a subtle chromatic palette, bring out both a silent resilience as well as a melancholy from this state of in-between worlds.