As part of its participation in the FUTURES platform, the Centre photographique has developed the Frutescens program, dedicated to the French photographic scene. For this 2023 edition, we have chosen to surround ourselves with personalities from the photographic world, chosen for their complementary views and perspectives on photographic creation. With Nathalie Giraudeau (Centre photographique d’Ile-de-France, Pontault-Combault), Emilia Genuardi (a ppr oc he, Paris), Marie Magnier (Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris), Jordan Alves (Éditions Xavier Barral, Paris), Julia Gelezova and Angel Luis Gonzalez (PhotoIreland, Dublin), Françoise Paviot (galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris) and Baptiste Rabichon (photographer, Paris), we have selected four photographers who are active in France: Arno Brignon, Damien Caccia, Marc-Antoine Garnier and Nina Medioni.
Looking for the common thread between authors with diverse backgrounds and views, we often get lost in simplifying the singularities and asperities of each of the works presented tend to be polished by dint of generalities. Let us risk the exercise with the four artists selected here and let us simply observe: they share, with us, a world held in uncertain balance of which the precarious condition is reminded us at each moment. It is on this slight thread that these artists move forward and build individually a work woven of troubles. Thus each in his own way, impregnated with this context of shared fragility, reconsiders the technical and relational processes at work in photography. In Arno Brignon’s work, uncertainty is lodged at the heart of the raw material by recycling outdated silver film; in Damien Caccia’s work, the permanence of the medium is thwarted by the systematic alteration of the recorded image; in Marc-Antoine Garnier’s work, the photographic dimension is perpetually put at risk, and in Nina Medioni’s work, the relationship between the photographed and the photographer is constantly reassessed.