Franck Bohbot has dedicated a major photographic series to Parisian swimming pools since 2012. From the Pontoise swimming pool to that of Amiraux or Butte-aux-Cailles, all three listed as historic monuments, his approach remains the same: to capture public places without people, in a systematic and frontal manner. Like the photographers of industrial installations, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Bohbot highlights the typology of the pools by showcasing their orderly arrangement and the architectural styles used, the lighting and colours of their interiors. His compositions are composed along a central perspective, revealing many vanishing points that give the photographs their great sense of depth. Franck Bohbot thus sheds light on a part of our heritage that is difficult to capture with the naked eye, since there are so many details to be discovered. The documenting of these details allows each of these swimming pools to be differentiated, rendering each one unique. These spaces where well-being and competitiveness often meet, constitute for many a primal and essential experience.

**The artist: Franck Bohbot**

Born in 1980 in the Parisian region, Franck Bohbot lives and works in New York. He began his career as a set photographer, producing a number of photographic series dedicated to urban architecture, from 2008 onwards. His subjects include theatres, libraries, fair grounds, and swimming pools. While Bernd and Hilla Becher dedicate their works to the frontal photography of industrial installations, the French photographer develops a protocol with the same precision that allows him to draw up an inventory of Parisian public, cultural, or sporting sites, devoid of any human presence. The artist adopts a frontal point of view each time, highlighting an almost perfect symmetry. The photographer's outsider's eye thus lends the sites a new dimension: one that is more monumental and stylised. These places are transformed into unique and captivating spaces, both in terms of their historical and sociological aspects, as well as aesthetic concerns. This ability to observe architecture in an original manner has earned him some major commissions by prestigious institutions such as the Louvre.