18/06/2009







Simon Menner's project Metacity records the informal structures of the homeless in the cities of Mumbai, Chicago, and Paris. Each of these cities was created from plans that oftentimes reflected the interests of elites, and not the realities of the poor. The port city of Mumbai adapted the British colonial model; Napoleon III commissioned Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann in 1852 to devise the plan that still defines Paris with its large boulevards and open spaces, and the Merchants Club of Chicago sponsored the renowned 1909 Daniel Burnham Plan of Chicago. Although all three plans endeavored to have a profound impact on a city's society and arguably did they inevitably failed to anticipate evolving urban requirements. Menner's photographs question whether there exist common elements of poverty in different cities around the globe. Menner is not as interested in documenting the homeless existing in the classic slums of third world countries, but in the individual homeless person and how he or she inhabits the modern city.

Sem comentários: