Galerie 19 Paul Fort in Paris exhibits travel images by the French photographer Gil Rigoulet showing raw, working-class England. The first trip dates to 1978, the last to 2017.
The English rituals were still well rooted, but in the 1960s, the country embarked on an unprecedented “cultural adventure”: the younger generations were able to enjoy leisure, gained access to consumer goods and mass culture, and were discovering new freedom and new music. In 1978, I landed in the heyday of Glam Rock, Punk Rock, Ska, New Wave, etc. English music was taking over the world with David Bowie, Kate Bush, The Clash, Sex Pistols, Madness, The Cure… But the decade was also marked by serious economic, political, and social problems which helped usher the Margaret Thatcher era in 1979.
I was twenty. Great Britain was as alluring as a distant planet. The street was the best showcase and I unapologetically plunged right in with my camera. I began photographing in 1975, learning how to look, how to find the right distance, the right moment… I sought word-images, a language capable of describing the English society, full of contrasts and in transition. My first photos were taken in 1977 and I continued through the late 1990s.
I wanted to immerse myself in that country, to understand what was constant and what was changing. I delved into details, examined situations up close, capturing what sometimes escapes our grasp. One must love human nature to devote so much time to it and one must have time to understand all the lives endured, the ways of transcending the ordinary, all the absurd situations, as well as the joie de vivre and the revolt.
If I encroached on other people’s lives, it was in order to view them with greater tenderness, acuity, intensity, humor, and love. Straight away, I found myself in the midst of things, up close and personal with the people whom I photographed. There was a tacit acceptance, sometimes a glance, a word that struck a note of complicity, but the photo was already taken. I slipped swiftly and lucidly in and out of events like a breeze.
In the summer of 2017, I boarded the Eurostar and took the Tunnel after twenty years’ absence… I decided to revisit the places I had photographed and to capture England post-Brexit. Clearly, with the same camera: an 80s titanium Nikon FM2.
Gil Rigoulet
Gil Rigoulet began his carrier in the press in 1975, and by the early 1980s had become the first in house photographer at Le Monde, where he worked for over 20 years. Over three decades, he collaborated with numerous magazines in France and worldwide, including Géo, Grands Reportages, Elle, Sunday Times, La Républica, La Stampa, El Pais, etc.
Gil Rigoulet, England 70–80 / 2017
November 22 to December 20, 2017
19 Paul Fort
19 rue Paul Fort
75014 Paris
France
