Dark Lens / Cédric Delsaux

The images simmering in the French photographer Cédric Delsaux’s Dark Lens series are an unsettling confluence of hyper-real cityscapes, a post-postmodern sense of humor … and characters from Star Wars.

There’s Darth Vader, in his dark and terrible glory, stalking Paris and Dubai; Jabba the Hutt lurking in some Parisian ruin; and the Millennium Falcon rocked by a sandstorm above Dubai. One of the many questions raised by these bewitching photographs is this: George Lucas’s science-fiction fantasy long ago colonized our cultural imagination, so why not our actual physical world?

But Mr. Delsaux swears that Dark Lens wasn’t born to pay homage to R2-D2, Luke Skywalker and their buddies. “My first intention wasn’t to produce a series on ‘Star Wars,’ but to photograph locations that are the makeup of our modernity: parking lots, peripheral zones, wastelands, forgotten places, of both beauty and ugliness, common and mad,” Mr. Delsaux said by e-mail. “Nevertheless, something was missing, my images were flat, déjà vu. I then had the idea to add these sci-fi characters, with the immediate effect of making my primal sensations stand out, the fantastical nature of the characters invading the whole frame, both universes harmoniously coming together.”

via The New York Times: An Earth Where the Droids Feel at Home

Check out the rest of Delsaux’s Star Wars series HERE.