From January 18 to March 3, 2018, Galerie Argentic in Paris presents a selection of about fifty photographs by Jean-Claude Gautrand. This selection covers over 60 years of work and brings together his most beautiful series, including Le Jardin de mon père (1998), featured here.
The chance discovery of a glove belonging to Gautrand’s father in the shed in the back of his garden, where he used to work, triggered deep emotion, bringing to the surface questions of memory and disappearance. The need to illustrate this moment soon became an imperative: to work solely on the few square meters surrounding the shed. To that end, the fruits for this garden, with their inherent, irrevocable decay, were going to be the perfect actors.
Allegoric and profoundly intimate, this series attempts to evoke the memory of the father by capturing things in fleeting moments, as they inexorably tend toward death, breathing the last breath, exuding strange beauty.
These images, in the tradition of Vanitas, are allegoric through and through. However, by a curious reversal of meaning, it seems they transmit another message. Created as a tribute to the memory of the father, don’t they signal to the photographer the end of the road after a long journey?
Jean-Claude Gautrand, Itinéraire d’un photographe
January 18 to March 3, 2018
Galerie Argentic
43 Rue Daubenton
75005 Paris
France
