“I photograph passers-by as if they were actors on a stage, and places as if they were film sets. Passers-by seem to be performing an indeterminate play, as if each were living a fleeting dream. These crossed faces disappear behind the role my gaze assigns them: the street becomes the setting for a comedy. Géraldine Lay.

Spontaneity, a touch of fiction that might remind us of the cinematic stagings of American photographer Gregory Crewdson or painter Hopper, Géraldine Lay’s work invites us to relive scenes of everyday life in European megacities. She loves the settings, the brick buildings, the quality of light, which under her lens dramatizes the most trivial situations. Géraldine plunges us into her world with a subtle blend of the real and the imaginary.

A graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieur de Photographie, Géraldine Lay has been exhibiting in numerous galleries for over ten years, and will be signing her latest book, published by Actes Sud, at Paris Photo.