Which One Is Paris?

An Eiffel Tower rises above manicured lawns. Classical statues of marbled men look down from their stoops. A carriage stands at attention on a thoroughfare. Viewers of Francois Prost’s new photo series “Paris Syndrome” could be forgiven for mistaking Tianducheng, a city in eastern China, with France’s City of Lights. Tianducheng is an example of “duplitecture,” in which Chinese cities are built to look like the greatest hits of architecture from around the world.

Prost is a graphic designer and photographer based in Paris. He first discovered Tianducheng a few years back, when he read an article about Chinese urbanist projects that aimed to replicate Europe’s idealized touchstones: castles in southern France, vineyards, Venice, and Paris. Replication of these sites are common around the world, Prost notes, but there was something different about Tianducheng.