Gilles Roudière’s work is about elsewhere. He transports us over the horizon. In the first place, he takes us into his globetrotter’s scattered geography: Cuba, Berlin, Albania, Istanbul, Ukraine… And yet he has no intention to create a documentary record. There is no actual information about Cuba, Berlin, or some remote region in the East he visited. What he shares with us is a whole other thing. Looking at his languid, grainy silver gelatin images, inspired by Japanese photography, one feels his need to go somewhere, take off, seek something, but what? It seems that the path he travels is more important than the destination.
In the first room of the exhibition currently on view at the in)(between gallery in Paris, small-format prints are lined up in a row like the pages of a Japanese orihon album. We are in Cuba: nothing one might expect, no stock pictures. Roudière’s images are devoid of any facile exoticism or iconographic folklore often associated with this popular destination in the history of photography. The point of contact is very risky: the images are often flooded with blinding light. Fleeting silhouettes appear here and there: a horse, a street, a caged bird… A strange ship sails on top of a wall.
In Gilles Roudière’s work, everything is silent: there is no chatter, no demonstration, no instruction. He takes us by the hand – he catches our eye – to guide us along on a journey. And we follow, we let ourselves be led; photography becomes a companion. At the bottom of a staircase leading to the lower level of the gallery, the photographer takes us to the East. A milky wedding gown glitters next to an insect stuck to a window pane, a child covers his eyes, an ecstatic woman offers her face to the sun, and everywhere you look, flitting patches of light, glaring suns, sinuous roads.
The faraway and photography form one territory, his own, the land of introspection punctuated by dazzling sights, as if transmissible sensorial experiences. A world beyond the world, between exaltation and solace: Roudière’s images leave us free to experience, each in his or her own way, the places he transfigures. Gilles Roudière transports us far away, into his inner self, seen through the eyes of the world.
Caroline Benichou
Caroline Benichou is a writer and exhibition curator specializing in photography. She lives and works in Paris.
Gilles Roudières, Echos… Latitudes
May 18 to June 16, 2017
in)(between gallery
39, rue Chapon
75003 Paris
