A series of buildings under demolition constitutes the “leitmotif” of the nine photos of “DowntownCorrida”. These subtle photomontages succeed in capturing the manifest demands of time on a structured environment under perpetual reconstruction. Inspired by amateur pictures of buildingsbeing destroyed, the photographer tests the porous boundaries that lie between the city and its periphery: an inversed viewpoint queries the common and categorical perception of peri-urbandevelopment. Here, precarious marginal housing has surrendered its place to a hitherto invulnerable metropolitan building. The sudden rapid disappearance of the building, bestowed with historicaldepth and pedigree, is unexpectedly taking place at the heart of a fictional landscape of public housing estates.The metaphorical title of the series borrows the idea of sudden death from the corrida; henceforth, the rising suspense in the lead-up to the final death-blow explicitly refers to the implosionsdepicted in the ingenious compositions of Alban Lécuyer. A fragile architecture gives way under the brutal impact of instant destruction. The powerless spectator contemplates the spectacle of publichousing being toppled in a closed world. With no possible reaction time, all that remains of the building’s previous existence is dust and rubble; a sense of uprootedness gradually gives way to thestandardisation of emergent buildings made according to new ephemeral models. The transposition effected by the artist underlines the conditioning of the position of the individual with respect toterritorial mutations.

Pamela Guerdat / Biel Festival of Photography catalogue / May 2011