PHOTO BY AURELIEN VIALATTE
There’s something funny about this image, isn’t there? Perhaps you didn’t realize it until a second or third look, but the distorted street lamps and blurry legs give it away: It’s upside-down, as French photographer Aurélien Vialatte flipped his lens to offer a different perspective on a few of the 55,000 runners participating in last year’s Paris Marathon. “I like taking [this style of] picture,” says Vialette, who snapped this particular shot around the two-mile mark, near the Louvre. “I use a lot of windows, lakes, or, here, some water in the street. Sometimes we don’t know which one is the reflection and which one is the reality.”
Although Vialette primarily shoots motorsports, he can’t resist the annual marathon’s picturesque route (he’s returning to photograph this year’s race on April 14) and its “crazy” and “never-ending” scene. “When the first runners arrive down the Champs Elysées, you can still see other runners passing through the start gate next to the Arc de Triomphe,” he says. No matter where the runners are on the course, Vialatte predicts they’re all thinking the same thing: “Never give up.”
