The title ‘Le bateau ivre’, or The Drunken Boat, which was photographed between 2019 and 2023 in Paris, refers to the poem of the same name by Arthur Rimbaud. In 1871, Rimbaud wrote his poem ‘Passport for Paris’ at the age of seventeen, in which he uses the image of a boot as a metaphor for a man’s journey through life. In a poetic photographic essay structured like a play in five acts, Martin Essl redraws the outline of a city undergoing transformation and, by doing so, composes an abstract contemporary map of Paris.

“Against the backdrop of crises and in memory of recent events as complex as they are tragic, Martin Essl would like to give expression to a new era that fluctuates between disillusionment and the frenzy of necessary reconstruction. To this end, he employs different contours and perspectives. Initially following the path of surrealists, the framework of this photographic endeavor is provided at first by water features and mirrors, vertical and horizontal lines, or even...