You might recognize this image, “Rosa,” from the cover of our 11/20 issue. Taken by Mexico-born photographer Francisco Macias O, “Rosa” is part of a Rafael Soldi-curated show FLANEUR, which is currently hanging at The Cloud Room on Capitol Hill. A “flâneur” is a term for someone who is an “urban explorer” of sorts, a person who is constantly observing life from the sidewalk.
Macias O’s photographs, then, embody that concept. Exploring how “indirectly and unwittingly, architecture and the urban backdrop affect passersby and vice versa,” there are quiet and beautifully mundane moments—like the empty corner of a patio swimming in sunlight and a truncated photo of a yellow minivan. But it’s the photographer’s pictures of humans that are the most compelling.
In “Rosa,” the person is turned with their back to us, unnaturally facing a wall. The pinkness of their hair doesn’t quite match the pinkness of the wall, offering a subtle but visually pleasing contrast between the two. Without access to their face, the picture is withholding, keeping our eye on it, making us read our own narrative or story in the composition.
Macias O’s vision of urban life reveals a clean and tidy universe, one that hems closer to perfection than disorder; it’s editorial. That doesn’t make his pictures less interesting, rather, it made me rethink the way I look at my environment. I find trash, graffiti, stickers, the unwelcoming hard edges of new and unfriendly high rises. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places.
FLANEUR is up until next Monday at the Cloud Room.
