Matteo Merea is an architect and photographer based in Paris. For him, these two disciplines are inseparable: one feeds into the other, and vice versa. For over twenty years, he has been photographing the places that capture his attention. At first to document his travels and construction sites, then to refine a more personal perspective on space, light, and what they evoke in those who pass through them. His Parisian series, patiently built up since he moved to the capital in 2020, explores an idea that is both simple and formidable: capturing Paris at the precise moment when the city’s light shifts. At golden hour, that shift at the end of the day when the noise subsides and forms reveal themselves in a new light. Matteo Merea often returns to the same places, because each visit yields a different image. Trained in film photography before switching to digital, he works without excessive retouching, careful to capture the atmosphere as it presents itself. “An image transcends all languages,” he says. “It allows you to share an emotion instantly, without needing words.”