Aurélie Pétrel

Aurélie Pétrel is an artist and photographer-author. Operating between visual arts and contemporary photography, she develops a position at the margins of established categories, often described as conceptual and experimental. Since 2012, she has also been a lecturer (Maître d’enseignement HES) at HEAD – Geneva. Her work unfolds across three scales of observation that she brings into tension. First, she examines economic and cultural systems and the collective dynamics that structure our environments and fields of action. She then focuses on individual dynamics, singular trajectories, and subjective experiences. Finally, she questions the image itself: its status, its uses, and the mechanisms of its production. Her practice draws on approaches akin to documentary methods—field investigations, protocols, and prolonged observation. These materials form matrices from which she shifts situations or phenomena into perceptual, spatial, or formal dimensions.
Rooted in long-term research, her work seeks to reposition the act of taking a photograph at the core of a multisensory reflection, notably through spatial dispositifs and “latent shots” that can be activated, displaced, or transformed. The image is conceived as an evolving process, capable of extending across media—from photography to installation, and into performance in her collaboration with Vincent Roumagnac. Collaboration constitutes a key operational mode in her practice, developed notably with Fabien Vallos as well as with researchers from various fields (including sociology and medicine).
A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (2006), she teaches at HEAD – Geneva, where she leads the Photography Pool, and has co-directed with Etienne Hatt & Michel Poivert, the Experimental Laboratory of the CIP – Collège International de Photographie du Grand Paris since 2018.