Indulge us for a second while we partake in some amateur mindreading. You’re thinking of the film Up, aren’t you? OK, so Derren Brown’s position as the nation’s premier tidy-bearded trickster is secure. But these photos of hovering houses are eerily reminiscent of the 2009 Pixar classic. A film, curiously enough, that Laurent Chehere, the French photographer behind these vivid images, claims not to have seen.
And before you start screaming ‘manipulative jiggery pokery’, just simmer down. Chehere avows that no retouching was used in the creation of this mind-bending collection; rather the photos are painstakingly assembled from a variety of images that were shot in the same light.
Either way, we’re suitably impressed. The manner in which the houses take on
a new life once divorced from their everyday surroundings, particularly the ground, has given our collective fascination with bricks and mortar a whole new context.
Anyone in Paris before the end of this month would be advised to visit the Cite de la Mode et du Design and take in Chehere’s fascinating ‘Flying Houses’ exhibition up close.
Laurentchehere.com and zeyneprepresents.
