Bérangère Fromont's République: Paris's

Photographer Bérangère Fromont has released a photo book and exhibition titled République, focusing on the young skateboarders of Paris's Place de la République. The project, which took three years to complete using a medium-format Mamiya film camera, portrays what Fromont calls the 'Princes of the Square'. You can explore more visual stories in our fixtures section.

The Princes of the Square

Fromont tells Dazed that she initially aimed to document the place itself, not the skateboarders. Spending time there changed her perspective. She quickly realized they were the square's main inhabitants, always present regardless of events in the city or world. The photographer notes that boys vastly outnumber girls in this space.

She calls them the Princes of the Square because they have this performative side where they'll show off a little for the daily passersby who snap pictures of them.

Her tightly framed, chiaroscuro portraits transform the gathering spot into a dramatic stage. Meditative faces and bruised torsos bathe in Paris's harsh summer light.

A Form of Quiet Resistance

The notion of resistance is a recurring thread in Fromont's work. In République, she finds it in the figure of the young skater throwing himself into the unknown. Resistance also appears in the act of repurposing public structures for playful, non-commercial pursuits.

According to the photographer, a radical possibility of softness itself constitutes resistance. She explains that given all the uncertainty youths currently face about the future, choosing gentleness is a radical act. They are not raising fists or shouting slogans. Instead, they are engaged in a quieter, more poetic kind of resistance expressed through their lifestyle.

She was really drawn to that.

Her portraits recall chroniclers of adolescence like Gus Van Sant and British photographer Paul Graham. A key difference lies in Fromont's total eschewal of posed portraiture.

A Labor-Intensive Process

The project was physically and mentally demanding. Fromont shot under the blazing sun with a hefty medium-format Mamiya film camera and a 50 mm lens. She took wide-angle photographs, cropping them in post-production to isolate compelling details.

She explains why the analogue-only project took three years to complete. To return every day in 40-degree weather with four kilos on her back, when it had been two weeks since she last captured anything good, was a struggle.

Fromont compares her 'failure-plagued' process to that of the skaters. They often accumulate intense wipeouts before landing a trick. As a photographer, all variables, sunlight, subject movement, camera mechanics, sheer luck, need to align. The same goes for them. They need good technique, smooth ground, grit and a moment of grace. Otherwise, they dust themselves off and try again.

That mindset speaks volumes about this generation, and it ultimately fuelled her persistence to keep returning to the square, she explained.

Visual Harmony and Timeless Beauty

Fromont does not shy away from expressing admiration for the pensive skaters and young onlookers in her frames. The way her stark light sculpts their expressive features feels like a natural extension of the square's bronze figures and stone statues watching over them. This visual harmony was deliberate.

She sought such visual harmony in her selection of images, she recalls, to draw out that kind of timeless, marble-like quality in the faces and bodies.

The book République is published by Chose Commune. An accompanying exhibition will show at the Institut pour la Photographie in Lille from 18 September 2026 to 16 January 2027. For more profiles on dedicated individuals, see our squad page.