The artists nominated by
Following the selection process, four artists were chosen for the uniqueness of their research and artistic achievements: Gaëlle Delort (1988), Lívia Melzi (1985), Emma Tholot (1994) and Valentin Valette (1994). While each artist has their own specific approach, they all address the question of the document and the photographic image as a place of memory or even belief.
With Gaëlle Delort, it is the landscape of the Causses, where she lives, that is revealed through a long-term exploration using a view camera. Combining speleology with her photography practice, she captures the geomorphology of the region in striking underground landscapes. Venturing into places beneath the ground we walk on, she methodically probes and records the other side of the world, where the archives of the earth lie.
It is the memory of human beings and their artefacts that Lívia Melzi seeks to highlight. Starting with the archives of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, destroyed by fire in 2018, she is also pursuing a long and extensive project of gathering material from the reserves of ethnographic museums. Based on these traces of the past, the Franco-Brazilian artist questions the future of their photographic collections.
Sediments of beliefs, the photographic image gains a range of forms borrowed from the field of popular Mediterranean tradition in Emma Tholot's work. Her installations blend theatrical elements from religion, carnival and the circus. Migrating onto fabric, embellished with ribbons, bells, wax ex-votos, cushions and satin, the photographic image is the crucible of a collective memory with a baroque accent.
Finally, the photographic document as deployed by Valentin Valette is shaped by his background in visual anthropology. The Franco-Algerian artist carries out photographic projects in the Gulf countries and is particularly interested in present-day Oman. In a large fresco combining documents, sound and photographs, he portrays migrant builders and entrepreneurs, and, isolated in vast desert landscapes, architectures that could be from the distant past or far-off future. Capturing faces and traces, he depicts a territory in transition, criss-crossed by migrations whose embodied lives are often erased, and patiently builds an archive of the time that once existed beneath these infrastructures of concrete and solar panels.
The members of the jury:
Marie Magnier, Director of Filles du Calvaire gallery
Valérie Cazin, Director of Binome gallery
David Benassayag, Co-director of Le Point du jour art center
Fannie Escoulen, Independent curator, co-founder of Le Bal, Paris
Nathalie Giraudeau, Director of Centre Photographique d’Ile-de-France
Claire Tangy, President of Centre photographique Rouen Normandie
