In a Gallery Far, Far Away ...: Cedric Delsaux

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ALTHOUGH THE LUCASFILM legal department disagrees, when something gets as popular as "Star Wars," it in some sense becomes public property, a set of building blocks for millions of ordinary people's imaginary lives.

And at that point it seems more appropriate for fans to mess with it than for George Lucas himself to start in with the digital tinkering. In his series "Star Wars on Earth," photographer Cedric Delsaux Photoshopped off-the-shelf models and action figures from the out-of-this-world space saga into very real French locations.

Like mourners at a viewing, R2-D2 and C-3PO look in on the wrecked hulk of an economy car, moldering away in a garage overgrown with moss. A long time ago, it roamed streets far, far away; now it's well on its way to becoming fodder for the archaeologists of the next millennium. In another scene, a dropped light saber sizzles in the neglected grass near suburban houses destined to become the slums of the future.

Of course, to the more-or-less-straight photographer, the whole world comes as a found object, ready for the tweaking. "Landscape," the other series on view at Project 4, is actually more uncanny. Although Delsaux has done little more than overexpose his 40-megapixel shots and tone them slightly on the computer, carefully selected images of soccer matches in the dust of Morocco or the surreal parade of commercial floats that leads the Tour de France have the unreal aura of the digital collages of Andreas Gursky. Even a prospect as mundane as a wave crashing against the sea wall along the Normandy coast hints at realms beyond our reckoning.

The point being that whatever we dream up, things are plenty weird as they are.

» Project 4, 903 U St. NW; Wed.-Sat., and by appointment, through Oct. 20; 202-232-4340. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Image by Cedric Delsaux