Experimental Photography:
Artworks like any others?

In partnership with Collège International de la Photo. 

Expanded, augmented, spatialized, alternative, experimental, post-photography... there's no shortage of names to characterize today's unconventional photographic practices. But how can we grasp the creative axes of the “artist-researchers” who take up the medium? Is it possible to speak of a “regeneration” of photography at a time when the materiality of images competes with their virtuality? 

Alice Pallot, Pique solaire, from the series Algues maudites, red bloom, 2024 - Courtesy The Eyes

David de Beyter (1985, F) is a photographic aritst. His approach to photography is both conceptual and documentary. He develops photographic, video, and sculptural projects, presented in exhibitions as immersive spaces. He is represented by the gallery Bacqueville and his work has been published by RVB Books.

Credits : © Alexis Gicart

Constance Nouvel, a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, has been developing a body of photographic work since 2010 that explores a plastic and experimental language.  Her research begins with images of real or fake landscapes that she captures on improvised journeys.  She manipulates them using the simple gestures of photography, deliberately provoking formal shifts, variations in scale and optical games. Her works extend into space, using architecture, light and drawing as tools for reflection. Each image becomes a fragment of a set, distracting us from reality and sowing confusion: what do we see, what do we understand? Introduced to the silver image process, she creates images that develop and build over time, and her works provoke physical and mental displacements that invite us to reflect on the act of looking..

Her work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2024, 2023), the Jeu de Paume (2022) and the Rencontres d'Arles as part of the Prix Découvertes (2017). In 2019-2020, she received support from the Fondation des Artistes and the Région Ile-de-France (foRte program) for a cycle of three exhibitions - Atlante, Solstice, Réversible - at the Galerie In Situ (2019), the art center Le Point du Jour (2019) and the Centre Photographique d'Île-de-France (2020), culminating in a book entitled DIAPORAMA, published by Le Point du Jour in 2020. In 2023, she is the fifth winner of the Prix de la Maison Ruinart, giving rise to a residency and photographic work entitled Mirées. Since 2016, she has collaborated with Galerie In Situ - fabienne leclerc, with whom she produced her latest solo exhibition, Jour double (2023).

Credits : © Alexandre Guirkinger

Alice Pallot (FR, 1995), lives and works between Paris and Brussels (FR/BE). In 2018, she graduated from ENSAV La Cambre (Brussels, BE). Her work questions the impact of human activities on the environment through the valorization of scientific research. In 2022, she will be taking part in the Résidence 1+2, a residency that brings together photography and science. In 2023, she will show the project “Algues maudites, a sea of tears” in 19 exhibitions in Europe, including the Rencontres d'Arles during La Nuit de l'Année and the Biennale Photo Climat in Paris. In April 2024, Alice Pallot wins the RJPI, Villa Perochon and Nouvelles écritures de la photographie environnementale awards with La Gacilly and Leica. From October 2024, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) will host the “Algues maudites” project in a major group exhibition entitled “Science/Fiction. Une Non-Histoire des Plantes” in Paris. In November 2024, the various parts of “Algues maudites” will be the subject of an exhibition at the Leica gallery in Paris, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the book Red Bloom will be published by The Eyes. The new part of Algues maudites will be present at Paris Photo in a solo show with Hangar gallery. 

Credits : © Quentin Chevrier

Evelyne Cohen is editor-in-chief of Le Grand Tour magazine. A graduate of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne in art history and EM Lyon Master of management, she first worked for ten years in the fashion and luxury goods industries before returning to her studies in art history. Specializing in the history of photography, she leads exhibition projects on contemporary photography and is a member of the Collège International de la Photographie. 

Michel Poivert is Professor of Art History at the Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, where he founded the Chair in the History of Photography, as well as a critic and curator. His publications include Brève histoire de la photographie, essai (Hazan, 2015) La photographie contemporaine (Flammarion, 2018), Les Peintres photographes (ed. Mazenod, 2017), 50 ans de photographie française de 1970 à nos jours (Textuel, 2019), Contreculture dans la photographie contemporaine (Textuel, 2022). He notably organized the exhibitions “L'Événement, les images comme acteur de l'histoire” (Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2007), “Gilles Caron Paris 1968” (Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 2018) and recently “La photographie française : une métamorphose 1968-1989” at the Pavillon populaire in Montpellier (2022-23). In 2018, he founded the Collège international de photographie project dedicated to the transmission and experimentation of photographic know-how. Michel Poivert is an Officier des Arts et des Lettres.

Credits : © Patrick Le Bescont