The Pierre Gonnord exhibition presented by the FRAC Auvergne gathers photographs of the artist who primarily specialized in portraits. Older photographs are exhibited with the French photographer’s last series, made in 2016, about the ASM Clermont Auvergne rugby team.
The exhibition offers a varied selection of Pierre Gonnord’s photographic repertoire in presenting the portraitist’s well-known works as well as some of his landscape photography.
In particular, one can find portraits of marginalized characters to whom Pierre Gonnard dedicated most of his work. Photographs of men and women with rough features, marked by work, by poverty, and by time. For example, those from the Testigo series, devoted to Seville’s gypsy community, and the Terre de Personne series, devoted to workers from Spain and Portugal’s rural and remote regions, coal miners and poor farmers. Each of these Pierre Gonnord portraits is captivating, where the subject, while often with minimal expressiveness, asserts himself with a singular force.
Rarer landscape photographs are part of Pierre Gonnord’s continuing portraitist path. These pictures arose from photographing excursions outside urban areas to reach out to the disenfranchised in their own territory. It was the connection between the landscape and the people who lived there that motivated his shots. The same harshness is read in the faces and the fires that ravaged the forests of Portugal and Galicia from the Relatos series.
Pierre Gonnord’s last series of photographs, made last May, is a collection of signs of exertion. It was initiated by the FRAC Auvergne, who suggested to the famous rugby team ASM to give Pierre Gonnord a carte blanche to record portraits of the players . This unpublished collaboration with athletes coincided with the photographer’s project to make a piece about physical force. It was not, however, treated in a traditional fashion; the body is not captured during the activity, featuring action and their physical fitness is not highlighted. Each player is photographed a few moments after the stress of a practice or match, faces marked by fatigue.
Pierre Gonnord
From January 14 to March 26, 2017
Frac Auvergne
6 rue du Terrail
63000 Clermont-Ferrand
France
