Gilles Pourtier

Gilles Pourtier's conception of photography is an open one. Refusing to constrain a practice usually based on residencies, exhibitions, specific publications, and collaborations, he enjoys distorting formats to produce pieces that can be considered both pictures and objects or installations. In this sense, each project is the start of renewed formal research. Collaboration is often at the centre of his approach, providing a space for negotiation that enables each participant to move forward with his practice, and sometimes produces works in which the joint signature makes it impossible to tell the works of the different photographers apart. Whether travelling upriver with Anne-Claire Broc'h (Before Science), documenting broken-down barns with Sandro Della Noche and Guillaume Gattier (They shoot horses, they don't demolish barns), or the life of workers in Slovakia (Vztahy), Gilles Pourtier's work is always marked by a sharp vision suffused with humility and poetry.