Surreal Streets is a series by French photographer Julie de Waroquier that explores the way the modern dreamer's private aspirations merge with the unforgiving reality of public streets. Anonymity becomes more and more a distant part of history with each passing day as people are expected to share themselves and their goals on public grounds. The photographer says, “In our society, our private and personal identities are built in public spaces, especially in the streets, theatres of our lives… I [want] to show how someone can build his/her inner identity in a world in which almost everything is public.”
By placing her subjects in the streets with her signature ethereal aesthetic, de Waroquier builds a surreal environment to reflect their wandering souls walking through atypically real territories. Each person appears lost, as though they have encountered an unexpected obstacle in their dreams. What would normally be a private dream filled with enchantment for each subject to play out in his or her own mind has turned into a public display for all to see on the brutally cold and hard streets. The photographer says, “I tried to express all these fears and tensions through symbolical pictures which represent what happens when the deepest realities of the human mind meet the harsh reality of public spaces.”
