A crucial year for Mathieu Pernot who is exhibiting simultaneously at the Rencontres d’Arles and at the Hotel des Arts in Toulon.
The city of Arles and its festival holds a particular place in your life. Why?
It’s a founding city for me since this where I went to photography school… and I often ask myself what my life would be like if I had not gone to this school. It was there that I learned photography and where I met the people who I hold dear to me today, some of which are the Gorgan family. I exhibited there in 1997, the year following my graduation, at the invitation of Christian Caujolle, who was the festival’s artistic director, and then in 2007, the year I exhibited Les Hurleurs in Montmajour… Twenty years after my first exhibition at the Rnecontres, I’m here with a series on Gypsies, who, since then, has been enlarged.
Let’s go back to the start… How did this series The Gorgans begin?
I was always drawn to the margins, the periphery of things… When I was a student in Arles, I would see these Gypsy children hanging out in the center of town and I suspected they weren’t enrolled in school. I had spotted the caravans near the train station, and I went to see them spontaneously, without a precise project in mind at the beginning… I didn’t know this universe. Very quickly, I made photos, I gave some to them… That continued from 1995 to 2000, the time when I lived in Arles… Then I needed to stop… It was very implicating on a personal basis. I would go to their place when I wanted and they could also come to my place as they pleased… Then I moved to Paris and I did other things… Then ten years passed.
Does this work hold a particular place in your journey?
It is, by far, my most important work– like an anchor– because it was not only a unique experience from the point of view of human relations, but it was also photographically unique. In the exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles, each person has a “wall”, in the form of a fresco that, contrarily to books, is not chronological. It’s the idea of a vertical dive into the story of a family, with images and a video.
Interview by Sophie Bernard
Mathieu Pernot, The Gorgans
Festival des Rencontres d’Arles
From July 3 through September 24, 2017
Maison des Peintres, Arles
France
www.rencontres-arles.com
