See the World’s Most Iconic Places Transformed by Whimsical Paper Cut Outs

Big Ben, London

Arc de Triomphe, Paris

London-based photographer Rich McCor understands that his city is a magical one, but like all of us, it’s easy to become tone-deaf to the quirks and nuances of a place simply by way of living there for a long period of time. That all changed when he saw Big Ben as no photographer had seen it before, not as a looming landmark but as his own personal wristwatch. Under the Instagram @paperboyo, McCor has reinterpreted the world’s most photographed sites using simple paper cutouts and an ingenious play in perspective.

Where most photographers aim to find the iconic in the everyday, McCor’s whimsical universe does the opposite, and there’s true delight to be found in the metamorphosis of normally sobering sights like Paris’s Arc de Triomphe or St Paul’s Cathedral in London transformed into something delightfully ordinary: a Lego man or an ice cream cone. And that’s the fun of @paperboyo; he takes once-in-a-lifetime places and makes them fresh and new by transforming them into something so familiar that we can’t help but be surprised.

Radhuset Metro, Stockholm

St Paul’s, London

Af Chapman, Stockholm

London Eye, London

The Little Mermaid, Copenhagen

Montmatre, Paris

The Louvre, Paris

Cirkelbroen, Copenhagen

St George’s Wharf, London

Sherlock Holmes Statue, London

Church of Our Saviour, Copenhagen

Holmens Kanal, Copenhagen

Trafalgar Square, London

Southbank Fountains, London

All images © Rich McCor

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