This selection of photographs from the series Puzzling puzzles is part of the numerous photographs taken during a three-month stay in New York in 2012 as part of a grant from the FRENCH INSTITUTE (HORS LES MURS PROGRAMME). 

New York is a city of grid patterns: the grid of the street plan and that of the glass skyscrapers with their countless glazed rectangles reflecting the mosaics opposite them. With lines distorted and diffracted, everything becomes abstraction.

While wandering in the city, I was fascinated by the architecture and the places I passed through. The streets are metamorphosed under the artificial lighting that gradually turns on at night falls. The space fills with a multitude of small luminous squares reflecting one another, creating a fragmentation that seems infinite: reflections of reflections, pulverisation and boundless mirrors.
The city seems to become undulatory or shattered and the images split as they tip over, disappearing in this kaleidoscope of colours and transparency.

Clara Maïda, September 2012