Les photographies
Day Sequence | Base and Confinement
Pascal Greco begins by identifying his fascination:
In each image, a piece of Earth. Systematic revelation of the support for the buildings: the hill – Hong Kong placed as best it can on the rock. There is dialogue between the organic and the artefact, structural and chromatic entanglements, an interweaving of technical, plant and mineral elements that Greco stages in different scenarios: minimalist abstractions in sublime cameos, golems alternately of asphalt and stone, highly complex graphic meshes imposing on the eye the density of a compacted space, an assembly of tones as harmonious and soft as they are pale and restrained. The marriage of all these confined elements raises a question:Iis it a happy marriage? Greco does not answer it. It’s as if the story took place between the Earth and an abandoned building.
Night Sequence | The Appearance of the Subject
At night, the body of the hill is no longer visible, and we discover scraps of food, bin bags, an abandoned envelope and a lit-up shop. Traces of recent passage. What is Greco talking about? The bewitched night owl discovers the answer as a matter of course. The subject is architecture. Look at this collection of seats, tables, pylons, pipes, lights, railings, roofs, dustbins, staircases, doors, windows, planters… Stigma of a place and an era. Greco collected them, with care and affection, with adoration. But it’s a good idea to forget and to remember this subject. It provides a foundation for the pleasure of aesthetic intoxication.
Sky Sequence | Life Revealed
Until now, Pascal Greco has taken us on a journey through a world in which he looks at familiar-sized things with delicacy. Now he’s added to the graphic intensity of the journey with magnificent, terrifying expanses of walls and windows. This is where we live. Real life. Paradoxically, it’s the drone’s eye that gives us a sense of it. It gradually makes us feel weightless, until everything is flattened: The crush is total. Even the photographer’s body has disappeared. e discover a living space, surrounded by other buildings, an entire city, connected by roads to a larger whole. In the clinical precision of the overhang, something has become humanised. The question comes up again: Can we live well here?
Born in 1978 and based in Geneva, Pascal Greco is a self-taught Swiss-Italian director, cinematographer, editor, and photographer. He began his career in the fashion industry as a model in the late 1990s and went on to organise Swiss fashion shows and events in New York and Tokyo.
He has nine films to his credit, including Shadow, an intense and haunting film starring actress, director, and spearhead of the #Metoo movement, Asia Argento and her daughter Anna-Lou Castoldi.
Greco is currently completing a documentary entitled The Scavengers about elderly people in Hong Kong who have little or no pension to cover their basic expenses, and who, to meet their needs, collect paper, cardboard or sagex and sell it for a pittance. A first version of the film was shown at the FIFDH in Geneva in 2019.
His photographic work focuses on architecture and its place in the landscape. Eight of his photographic works have been published, two of which are the result of an in-depth study, over eight years, of Hong Kong and its unique and atypical architecture: Hong Kong – Perspectives, Prospectives, 2010 Typologies and Hong Kong Neon.
His latest project and book Place(s) is part of the “post- photography” movement. His disturbingly realistic images focus on “natural” and “existing” landscapes. They question our perception and construction of reality in the digital age.
Greco’s work has been the subject of numerous articles, notably in The Guardian, Vice, Numéro, Libération, Les Inrocks, Fisheye, Monocle, La Reppublica, Creative Review and Fast Company.
For five years, Greco trained young people with no formal training, or with social problems, in the Scène Active socio- cultural project, teaching them to make films and videos for clients in the social sector.
Three years ago, with stage director Radhia Chapot-Habbes, he co-created the ELAN collective, whose aim is to enable vulnerable, disadvantaged or isolated people to enjoy human and artistic experiences as a means for regaining their self- esteem and self-confidence, thereby enabling them to integrate more fully into society and realise their potential.
© Text and pictures by Pascal Greco
You can find the book in Building books and Chambre Noire
