Philippe Fragnière

The manifold forms of contemporary urban language are fascinating. Among them, one form in particular weaves disturbingly palpable links with minimal art, the composition of regular geometric volumes and the abstraction of functions. This is the smooth concrete skate-park in peri-urban areas. Philippe Fragnière approaches this story from an unexpected angle. He focuses his lens on snowparks, those mountainous equivalents that are to snowboarding what concrete mats are to skateboarding. Caught in the snow, the shapes become even more abstract, even more unreal. Between white sand castles and snow land art — whose colours reinforce the connection with early minimalist sculpture — the snowparks captured by Fragnière seem to be mock-ups or 3D models. The book presents these dynamically, on double, fold-out pages, pressed between a thick cardboard cover and accompanied by a text written by sociologist Joël Vacheron. [Denis Pernet]