For the Stretched City series, Pascal Bobillon questions the contemporary city. The photographer compares modern constructions with those of the past. More specifically, he questions humankind’s propensity to build ever-higher edifices. The secularisation of the modern world involves a radical change of the models that have heretofore influenced global architecture. Religious edifices seem derisively small in comparison to the Empire State Building or the Bank of America in New York. In a kind of gargantuan one-upmanship, the city’s skyscrapers stretch inhabitable spaces upwards. These structures become new symbols of power for a humanity that no longer needs to defy the gods.

**The artist: Pascal Bobillon**

Pascal Bobillon was born in 1962 in Paris. A self-taught photographer, he has used digital capabilities to create a body of work on the borders of abstraction and representation. Ever watchful, over time he has constituted a gigantic personal photo library on his travels. These photographs are archived and may remain ‘dormant’ for many years. Time creates his work and the emotion that forms the basis for capture settles and evolves. A day comes when the artists feels the need to use the images taken, sometimes years later.