Passage dans la Petite Couronne by Hugo Denis Queinec

Passage dans la Petite Couronne is a zine showing a project of French photographer Hugo Denis-Queinec. The Petite Couronne (or Little Crown) designates the three closest departments of the suburbs of Paris: Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne. Each of them has its specificities, and they often contrast with one another: while one of them is known for being one of the poorest French departments with the highest rate of emigrated population, the other is known for its wealth and as the home of many political celebrities. Nevertheless, one thing reunites them all: the special in-between feeling particular to suburban cities. The zine is published as the second of three volumes and was presented at the Printed Matter art book fair, New York, and at P38 Gallery, Paris.

Atelier Choque Le Goff designed a medium format booklet of 195×255 mm: big enough for the reader to be taken into the pictures, while still being easy to handle. We dive into forty pages exclusively composed of photographs; portraits, details or landscapes all together, representing different aspects of the Petite Couronne.

For the cover of the zine, the graphic designers chose to set the title with Signal Compressed from Production Type, accompanied by small type in Courier. The book deals with the idea of territory, so using a typeface inspired by the French highway signage is relevant, furthermore when we know that living in the suburbs often implies having a car. On the other hand – in French as well as in English – the word “passage” means going through something, or a tight way: the compressed style of Signal evokes this idea of a narrow path followed into this area.