Aurore BAGARRY

De la côte

“The rock reminds me of Friedrich Schlegel’s ‘hedgehog fragment’ and the writings of Novalis, who was also a geologist and cosmologist. It is both a world in itself and a miniature model upon which the artist lets their imagination evolve. Enclosed, isolated, the fragment paradoxically possesses a powerful evocative force. Thus, geological formations or curiosities suggest distant landscapes, present on other continents. By playing with scale, by focusing on certain colors, I build a repertoire of rock forms to give free rein to the creation of a seascape—both real and imaginary.”

In her new series De la côte (From the Coast), Aurore Bagarry examines the memory of rocks and the imprints left by water. Sensitive to the metamorphoses of the landscape, she captures a moment of a constantly shifting shoreline, where water is the element that binds and dissolves, prompting reflection on our history and memory.

Her approach—both scientific and sensitive to the terrain—places her work within a broader reflection on the fragility of our environment and the climatic changes to come. The result of documentary work created using a large-format camera, her images present a vision in which nature converses with time, capturing an ephemeral landscape destined to transform over the decades, a reflection of our contemporary ecological concerns.

Roches

How can photography, in the 21st century, through its indexical nature, reveal the depth of geological phenomena—when it is generally associated with surface and transparency rather than matter?

This project seeks to intertwine the notions of photographic documentation and landscape transformation. The area of investigation stretches from the northern coasts of France to the southern shores of England, facing one another. These regions, particularly rich in geological curiosities, reveal—through the sensitivity of their shorelines, their collapses, and ecological challenges—new clues essential to understanding their formation. The English Channel was also chosen for its role in questioning the boundary between two countries (France and Great Britain) and the porosity of that border, which can be seen through geological imprints and exchanges.

This photographic project thus revolves around research on water as an imprint on the landscape and the notion of natural borders. The field of exploration extends from the northern French coasts to those of southern England, facing each other. The artist continues her large-format photographic atlas approach, initiated with the Glaciers series, offering a personal interpretation of the Channel’s landscapes through an inventory of forms born from the slow erosion of the coastline.

Roches received support from the DRAC Bretagne (Individual Creation Grant) in 2017 and from the Centre d’Art GwinZegal in Guingamp in 2019.

Glaciers

Aurore Bagarry’s contemporary photographic ambition to represent all the glaciers scattered across the Mont Blanc massif takes on a new meaning—that of an aesthetic act whose urgency unites both form and content. To see, to observe, to show, to represent what will soon no longer exist is also a political gesture, in the broadest sense of the term.

Her work connects with the history of the Mont Blanc massif—a history shaped by the passage of time, intertwined with the cultural destiny of this highly symbolic part of the Alps. The documentary nature of her carefully considered and selected photographs, the result of nearly five years of systematic exploration of every glacier, has produced a fresh, original perspective—one shaped by the territory’s rapid transformation.

Daniel Girardin

Works

Exhibitions

2022

Le langage du paysage

Art Paris (Grand Palais Éphémère)

07.04.2022 – 10.04.2022

2021

Roches

Galerie SIT DOWN, Paris

06.03.2021 – 06.06.2021

2018

Glaciers

PARIS PHOTO, Paris

08.11.2018 – 11.11.2018

Glaciers

Salon Photo Doc. Espace des Blancs  Manteaux, Paris

04.05.2018 – 06.05.2018

2017

2015

Glaciers II

Galerie SIT DOWN

24.10.2017 – 02.12.2017

Glaciers

Galerie SIT DOWN

28.05.2015 – 24.06.2015

Biography

Aurore Bagarry is a French photographer and video artist, born in 1982 in Le Mans. She graduated from Gobelins School in Paris in 2004 and from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 2008 with honors. Since 2015, she has been represented by Galerie Sit Down in Paris.

Her research has been supported by the LVMH Prize in 2008, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (France) in 2013 and 2015, the Individual Creation Grant from DRAC Bretagne in 2017, and the Centre d’Art GwinZegal in 2019 for her series Roches (2016–2020). In 2020, she was selected for the public commission Regards sur le Grand Paris #4, initiated by CNAP and Ateliers Médicis.

Through the logic of the photographic atlas and the practice of walking, she offers a personal reading of the landscape by creating an inventory of forms—sometimes fragile despite their monumental scale (Glaciers, 2012–2018), or the barely perceptible result of slow erosion (Roches, 2016–2020).

Her work has been exhibited in several major institutions: the artothèque of Annecy, Centre d’Art GwinZegal, Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Roger Quilliot Art Museum in Clermont-Ferrand, Hautetour Museum in Saint-Gervais, La Filature in Mulhouse, the Museum of Art and History in Saint-Denis, and the French Ministry of Culture in Paris. She has also participated in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and festivals such as Jeune Création #69 at the Fondation Fiminco, Les Photaumnales in Beauvais, Photo London, Paris Photo, Photodoc in Paris, L’Image Publique in Rennes, La Semaine des Arts de Paris 8 in Saint-Denis, Les Instants Vidéos Numériques et Poétiques in Marseille, and the Réseau de l’Âge d’Or in Avignon.

Her books Glaciers, Volumes 1 and 2, were published by h’Artpon Editions in 2015 and 2017. Roches, created in collaboration with Gilles A. Tiberghien, was published by GwinZegal Editions in December 2020. In 2022, h’Artpon published the complete, large-format version of Glaciers, bringing together the first two volumes along with a new photographic series produced in the Chablais massif.

Press

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015