With students from the Gilbert Martin Agricultural High School in Neubourg, in the Eure department.
In the fall of 2020.
The school year: months ahead of us. There, he would work with the students on “the beautiful work” of the land. We would be invited to discuss fine machinery and good food; together we would learn to read the landscape upside down—head down, field up—to write words and take photographs, all the way to the moment the shot is taken.
A desire for hybridization was emerging, a rough draft of a menu: bananas ripening on a workbench, eggplant on a bed of tractor parts, asparagus on a car body. Dishes we thought we’d cook together, but that was before a few announcements of lockdowns, reopenings, and many other “buts.” The workshop gave way to the screen. Everyone found their place again.
The exhibition and the journal published simultaneously document a year-long residency by photographer Sylvain Gouraud, accompanied by writer Philippe Ripoll, at the high school: from in-person workshops to those conducted remotely, from aspirations to surprises, from images to words, and vice versa…
A creative residency as part of the Triptyques Alter-Échos arts and culture education program led by the Gilbert Martin Agricultural High School and the Rouen Normandy Photography Center. It is funded by the Normandy Region and the Normandy Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs. The Alter-Échos triptych has also received support from the Normandy Regional Directorate for Food, Agriculture, and Forestry, the city of Le Neubourg, and CAUE 27.
