Photo © Loïc Vendrame
Urban - 3RD PLACE WINNER: Loïc Vendrame
Riad Mirage Club
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Riad Mirage Club (Morocco, 2017 - 2018) is the last volume of the long-term and ongoing documentary project Future Rust, Future Dust (2016 - ), which aims to analyse the urban and architectural impact of the last world financial crisis and the burst of the real estate bubble.
Through a "concrete tsunami" exploration of ghost cities, aborted tourism projects, unused infrastructures, or roads leading to nowhere, this project plunges us into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, vestige of this modern age mixing economic failures, corrupt elected officials, megalomaniac investors and dreams of home-ownership.
Witnesses of this big waste of – often public – money, these modern ruins hide human and ecological tragedies: indebted and defrauded people, homes finished but abandoned when so many people can’t find a place to live, and Nature disfigured for nothing, even in areas protected by law.
Throughout a visual approach combining aestheticism and graphism, Riad Mirage Club reports the impact of the 2008 financial crisis which directly affected Morocco, from Marrakech to Tanger. Marrakech and the ocean coast, main touristic destinations, experienced an outbreak of property programs, characterized by a strong demand and soaring prices, in an unregulated area where everyone could become a promoter. Today, these concrete skeletons continue to dot the semi-desert, shoreline and green hills landscapes of Morocco.
About author:
Geographer and now working in humanitarian NGO, my passion for urban photography was born 7 years ago. Firstly attracted by contemporary architecture, I explored metropolises of the world to find colourful and graphics architectural subjects, seeking to sublimate volumes and perspectives.
Today my photographic work is shifting towards the study of urban planning, land and space. I’m looking to highlight unsustainable political and socio-economic phenomena, sometimes devoid of all common sense, through a photographic documentation project on “non -places” and urban interstices.
Through a "concrete tsunami" exploration of ghost cities, aborted tourism projects, unused infrastructures, or roads leading to nowhere, this project plunges us into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, vestige of this modern age mixing economic failures, corrupt elected officials, megalomaniac investors and dreams of home-ownership.
Witnesses of this big waste of – often public – money, these modern ruins hide human and ecological tragedies: indebted and defrauded people, homes finished but abandoned when so many people can’t find a place to live, and Nature disfigured for nothing, even in areas protected by law.
Throughout a visual approach combining aestheticism and graphism, Riad Mirage Club reports the impact of the 2008 financial crisis which directly affected Morocco, from Marrakech to Tanger. Marrakech and the ocean coast, main touristic destinations, experienced an outbreak of property programs, characterized by a strong demand and soaring prices, in an unregulated area where everyone could become a promoter. Today, these concrete skeletons continue to dot the semi-desert, shoreline and green hills landscapes of Morocco.
About author:
Geographer and now working in humanitarian NGO, my passion for urban photography was born 7 years ago. Firstly attracted by contemporary architecture, I explored metropolises of the world to find colourful and graphics architectural subjects, seeking to sublimate volumes and perspectives.
Today my photographic work is shifting towards the study of urban planning, land and space. I’m looking to highlight unsustainable political and socio-economic phenomena, sometimes devoid of all common sense, through a photographic documentation project on “non -places” and urban interstices.