Walking through the Fog – Surreal Urban Photography at La Défense

Discover a surreal urban moment: a foggy morning transforms La Défense into a dreamlike scene. In this photo taken during the Les Extatiques art festival, Sebastien Desnoulez captures a fleeting instant where architecture dissolves into atmosphere and poetry.

Walking through the Fog is a photograph taken on the Esplanade of La Défense during the Les Extatiques contemporary art festival. This immersive installation turned the famous Takis fountain into a temporary landscape where fog was released at regular intervals to immerse passers-by in a surreal atmosphere.
This installation also inspired another photo in the same series, Riding through the Fog, where a cyclist emerges through the mist like a ghostly silhouette.

Backlit, the image captures a suspended moment: a businessman walks through the fog, his silhouette outlined by the raking morning light. Shot with an ultra wide-angle 11mm lens, the composition plays with symmetry and vanishing lines. The subject is perfectly placed: his head at the center, legs pointing to the lower corners, creating striking visual balance.

The La Défense business district becomes a poetic visual stage. Glass and steel towers partially disappear into the fog, offering a dramatic contrast between modern architecture and ephemeral mist.
Together with Riding through the Fog, this work invites you to see La Défense in a new artistic light, blending everyday movement with ephemeral atmospheres.

A friend once said about this image:
“It could have been the cover of a Pink Floyd album!”
Indeed, its dreamlike, almost surreal ambiance evokes a timeless visual and sonic universe.

As a photographer of urban atmospheres and architecture, I aim to capture those fleeting moments when the city reveals another dimension, between reality and imagination. This image belongs to a series focused on La Défense, where I seek to offer a renewed vision of a place that is already widely photographed.

Order a fine art print of this photograph, in a limited edition of 30,
from the online photography gallery Une image pour rêver.

Author: Sebastien Desnoulez is a professional photographer specializing in architecture and urban atmospheres. With a focus on light, composition, and poetic contrasts, he captures fleeting moments that transform everyday scenes into visual stories. Learn more.

All the photos displayed on this website are copyright protected © Sebastien Desnoulez. No use allowed without written authorization.
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