French artist Cedric Delsaux has produced a new photography show, in which altered photos of Dubai are interspersed with iconic figures from the Star Wars films. The combination of Dubai's most haunted corners and instantly recognizable images from the classic science fiction series, looks jarringly natural. The implicit parallels between Star Wars and Dubai, a city that has struggled against financial catastrophe and accusations of slave labor, are compelling: futuristic, iconic, and tragic. "The Dark Lens: Dubai Invasion" can be viewed in its entirety at Delsaux's site. We've sampled a few choice works below.

"Star Wars is a gateway to another world," says French photographer Cedric Delsaux. "It's not just a distant elsewhere, not a simple vessel or even an unspecified planet exploited over and over again in other sci-fi movies. Star Wars is a billion galaxies, a complete cosmogony, a space and time in its own right. This unbounded universe has an exhilarating effect on me. It's a visual dopamine!"

..."Dubai is a singular city born out of a dream, a will of grandeur, a reflection of power," says photographer Cedric Delsaux. It's the city of superlatives — tallest, biggest, most expensive, maddest. When you walk through Dubai, everything is there, precise and detailed, but it just doesn't seem quite attached to reality. This distortion is the basis of my whole body of work, Dark Lens included. It's my photographic obsession."

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at mfisher at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.