Patrick Zachmann has been documenting the rebuilding of the Notre-Dame de Paris since the day of the catastrophic fire on April 15, 2019.
From the first months after the fire, an open-air exhibition of Zachmann’s careful documentation has surrounded the symbolic building, titled “Le chantier de Notre-Dame de Paris et ses métiers” (The Notre-Dame de Paris construction site and its trades.) While the site remains inaccessible to the general public, the surrounding exhibition gives an exclusive look behind the scenes of the rebuilding process and the people involved.
In July 2024, ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris, this free exhibition has now been revamped with a new series of photographs and diagrams. “The site is full of human life, where I have been photographing a lot of people. They are humble, and passionate about what they do,” says Zachmann. “Some of the photos are spectacular, like the one of a rope-maker dressed all in white floating in the air like a cosmonaut, or the one of the restoration of a May, an impressive tableau with many people working around it.”
