These photographic compositions are montages of images taken in Paris and Beirut at different times of year. This project is the result of creative research on the theme of time and space. Time as the subject that was, is and will be. Time unfolding in a city, absent and spectral, devoid of content. There is nothing to own, no body, no action and no framework of history.

We are looking at a clear connection. We must take time to examine these images. Only then can we embrace all of the details and stories contained in them. Each image is the result of symbiosis, a clear connection between different time and space. Winter melts into summer, Paris into Beirut, a rolling steel shutter in a Paris suburb.

Time is at play in several ways. First of all, I took the original image as part of a series of photos shot at intervals ranging from seconds to months. This treatment of time gave rise to another. The idea was not to fill empty space to the point of saturation with characters and codes, but to counteract switching between visual and mental ideas by eliminating every trace of our entertainment-driven society.

Stripped of media and advertising, these scenes permit infinite contemplation. It is a godless world: when it was stripped of the word, He abandoned it. Perhaps these photographs represent the blind eye that makes inner vision possible again.

Inside these sanctuaries with their strange, heavy atmospheres, not a single human is visible and yet a human presence seems to fill the space. It’s like a mirror reflecting something that isn’t there yet influences the unfolding of future time. It’s like a consequence unfolding.

Slow text & photos by James Bort