Behind the Scene

Between 1999 and 2001, Dutch visual-artist Arthur Kleinjan spent hours perched in a balcony above the bleached-stone beauty of the Sacré Coeur church in Paris, watching the people below. As tourists struck poses for souvenier snapshots, he would take a second photograph, from behind. These images, from his book Paris Looks (Artimo Amsterdam) are the result. “Sometimes it takes a few seconds for their friends to get the camera ready,” saids Kleinjan, “and they suddenly don’t know what to do with their bodies. They ask themselves, what leg do I stand on? A bag, or a bottle of water should be out of the image, so they keep it behind their back. They design themselves into what they think is a nice picture.” Kleinjan says the project is his way of trying to understand why people feel compelled to have a “generic image of themselves” in Paris. “I wanted to show the moment of alteration, as the tourists transform themselves into an image. They seem very self-conscious about the way they look. Vulnerability is revealed. Their discomfort with their own body, as they stand there, is isolated in time and space, waiting to become a future memory.•