Chongqing, on the four shores of time - Photographs by Cyrus Cornut

In May, for the^3rd year running, the Orangerie du Jardin des Plantes is hosting an exhibition by artist Cyrus Cornut as part of the "Parallèle" section of the Boutographies festival, Montpellier's photography highlight.

Photographer Cyrus Cornut, who trained as an architect, focuses his work primarily on the city, its plasticity, its evolution, its traces, its voids, and the human behaviors it induces.
In 2006, his first series on Chinese cities was exhibited at the Rencontres Internationales de la photographie d'Arles under the artistic direction of Raymond Depardon. From 2011, his research also focused on the place of plants in the urban landscape. In 2017, he produced a series on the world's largest metropolis, Chongqing, China.

The municipality of Chongqing, in the People's Republic of China, has experienced one of the world's strongest demographic and economic growth rates, and now boasts a population of 34 million.
Chongqing, the "Mountain City", criss-crossed by the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, struggles to pierce the thick fog that covers it all year round.
Urban forms and infrastructures have sprung up, defying gravity, embracing the reliefs of its four steep banks and etched by its waterways. The speed of urbanization has overtaken the slow time of fishermen, the erosion of rivers and the powerful blossoming of mountains.

Cyrus Cornut presents here a work of striking plastic contrasts, in which his vision of the human being in his relationship to society and his living environment shines through.