ROMAIN LAPRADE: Hallways

"Hallways" brings together a series of photographs taken by Romain Laprade in the entrance halls of Parisian residential buildings constructed between the 1950s and the 1980s. For several years, the photographer has wandered through Paris in search of these discreet architectures, where a singular visual language unfolds through materials, geometric compositions, mosaics, colours, reflections, typography, lighting fixtures and sculptural letterboxes.

Conceived as a visual drift, the book gathers these “hidden treasures” through a sequence of formal correspondences and visual echoes. Detached from their immediate architectural context, the halls become autonomous, almost abstract spaces, where sensory experience takes precedence over documentary reading. Shapes, patterns and light seem to respond to one another from page to page, composing an ensemble guided by an intuitive and sensitive approach.

Far from a historical or typological study, "Hallways" offers an immersion into an architecture of detail and sensation, shaped by the spatial and visual experimentations of the post-war period. Accompanied by a text by Jean-Claude Girard, the book offers a sensitive perspective on these transitional spaces, conceived as places of everyday experience suspended between public space and domestic intimacy.

Text from the editor