On the night of 13 November 2015, Paris was convulsed by a series of coordinated attacks. Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong, not far from the strikes, did not consider taking photographs, weighed on not only by the difficulty of depicting a city already so exhaustively pictured, but more so by the impossibility of representing such tragedy. The next day Leong, wandering the city in the aftermath of the events, turned his camera downward to the ground, focusing on an aspect of the city we repeatedly look at yet largely do not notice. The resulting photos render a seemingly known city strange and unfamiliar. At first appearing to be abstractions or even aerials or views of the cosmos, they reveal specific details we would otherwise miss and which contain gravity in their apparent banalityfrom cigarettes left on the asphalt by mourners, to the footprints and broken glass of the night before, and the sawdust scattered on the sidewalks soaking up blood. Paris, Novembre is a portrait of a city at a traumatic moment in its history and an exploration of how that history leaves its marks on the citys ground. Leongs series is a gesture of mourning and contemplation, seemingly of nothing and the reluctance to look, yet at the same time of looking closely and intently.

Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong is a British-American artist, born in Mexico City in 1970. His work is an effort to picture and understand the complexity of connections and relationships in the larger world. His series include "Horizons," "Cities," and "History Images" (published by Steidl in 2005). He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and his work is held in major museum collections throughout the world.