Christian Catafago

In 2020, the bursting cities of the world came to a halt.

I first took panoramic images of the emptied cities of Buenos Aires, Brussels and Paris but there remained something to see just before my family joined me in Paris: CDG Terminal 1.

This was the first terminal conceived by Paul Andreu: I had learned a lot from him firsthand while studying architecture in Paris, usually airports are a layer- cake of diverse activities and movements.

This time things were different:
One could see through the terminal toward the tarmac and all planes were grounded. There wasn’t a single vehicle around, I even encountered cyclists pedaling the wrong way as was becoming usual in Paris. This circular airport was in reality a huge multilayered merry-go-round, a sort of kaleidoscope in which to loose oneself.

Despite the proportion of this artifact, I wouldn’t get dizzy; the real excitement would be for the next day when I would be joined in Paris by my family, they were to land in Orly, the other Parisian airport, the place where I first discovered travelling as a child and be really amazed…