Photographer Jérome Sessini has chosen to revisit a subject significant both in his personal life and in his professional career, the city of Mexico. The project echoes the early work of Henri Cartier Bresson in 1934. Indeed, Cartier Bresson was attracted by the surreal atmosphere that emanated from the city. As he was still seeking for recognition, he travelled to Mexico City to produce some work as a street photographer. He defined there his photographic style and realized a vast social study of the city, of the variety of ethnic groups that composed it. His report shows a dark reality and from his photography emerges a poetry that will characterize his work.

Jerome Sessini has earned his stripes in Mexico. From 2008 to 2012, he endeavoured to capturing the social realities of the country, plagued by drug trafficking and a climate of great insecurity. His long-term work was combined in a first book called The Wrong Side. Paradoxically, he never focused his attention on Mexico City. After all this time spent wandering the country, Mexico has also become for him a place of personal ties. Returning there is a way of taking a new look at this country through its capital, focusing rather on the cityscapes and on the city lights than on the human element that composes it.

This journey coincide with the Day of the Dead, capturing the cult of Santa Muerte, an element of folklore emblematic of Mexican culture all around the world, and continues with a travel inside the landscapes of Mexico City, the ruins of the ancient Aztec culture and the volcanoes that dominate the city. Sessini revisited the everyday life of the Mexico’s city of today: their craze for sports like wrestling or boxing, the migrant road, the night.

*This project has been supported by Canon Europe.

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