Gilbert Garcin died peacefully in his sleep (unrelated to the current pandemic). He was 90 years old.
Born in La Ciotat on June 21, 1929, Gilbert Garcin began a second life as an artist when he retired, after a career in the lighting industry.
An internship at Arles seems to be decisive in the creative passion which seized him and pushed him to build, between 64 and 83 years old, a photographic work which quickly became a reference. Exhibited in France and around the world, it seduced the general public and critics with his world of carefully elaborated images, accompanied by a sometime humorous, sometime wise title.
Gilbert Garcin’s technique belonged more to Méliès than to the digital world: he first thoughtfully composed his images before realizing them by cutting out his own image (sometimes accompanied by that of his wife Monique) which he placed in a minimalist decor, tinkered on a table in his little studio-shed in La Ciotat.
Philosophical fables, humanist reflections imbued with lightness and poetry, his photographs cover universal themes such as love, time, glory, solitude or freedom.
Didier Brousse
Galerie Camera Obscura
268, boulevard Raspail
75014 Paris
