Marc Vidal Photo Gallery / Sara Urbaez / April 27, 2018 4:40 PM
Marc Vidal01Photographer Marc Vidal grew up in the 1980s in a suburb of Lille, France much like this one.
Marc Vidal02Vidal remembers a childhood spent playing soccer and other games with the neighborhood kids, but that's all vanished.
Marc Vidal03When Vidal recently began exploring the Lille suburbs, he was shocked at how lifeless the streets felt.
Marc Vidal04Vidal deliberately excluded people from his photographs to give the viewer a sense of the neighborhoods' spiritual emptiness.
Marc Vidal05Although the traces of human activity are on display, as in this neatly trimmed hedge, the humans themselves are mysteriously absent.
Marc Vidal06The manicured lawns and carefully trimmed hedges give the neighborhoods the look of a movie set.
Marc Vidal07Vidal was struck by the absence of children playing in the streets; the only people he encountered were a few people walking dogs.
Marc Vidal08This lonely basketball hoop suggests the presence of children, but Vidal rarely saw any of them playing outside.
Marc Vidal09An upside down trampoline suggests a lost world of innocent childhood play.
Marc Vidal10Apart from this very European-looking car, there is little in the photographs to identify the neighborhoods as being in France.
Marc Vidal11Vidal believes these homes have simply become convenient places for people to eat and sleep while they aren't working.
Marc Vidal12Vidal detected little interaction between residents—a far cry from the spirit in the neighborhood of his childhood.
Marc Vidal13The photographs' formal beauty contrasts with what Vidal considers the essential ugliness and conformity of these neighborhoods.
Marc Vidal14Vidal says he no longer recognizes the neighborhoods of his youth because of their lifelessness.
Marc Vidal15The streets in one neighborhood are all named after famous artists, an attempt, Vidal believes, to imbue them with magic.
Marc Vidal16In the end, Vidal sensed a profound isolation and social anomie in these picture-perfect suburbs.
Marc Vidal17Just like the houses, the people who live here seem to Vidal to be walled off from each other.
