BREST.- Aurore Bagarry (1982) invites us to travel far away from the beaten track, far beyond the mere representation of the landscape. When we look at her photographs, we are not looking at picturesque views, but are plunged into timescapes, tableaux where geology evolves in a silent choreography, and where the passing of eras is sculpted by the light.
Through her iconic series, from the majestic ‘Glaciers’ to the raw ‘Rocks’ via the evolving expanses of ‘From the Coast’, Aurore Bagarry does not capture the moment, she reveals its full extent. Her demanding and meditative use of the photographic chamber slows down the work, imposing a patience that impacts on the image itself. The infinitesimal details of the rock strata, the texture chiselled by the elements, the nuanced colours revealed by the dawn or dusk, all contribute to a profound, almost tactile, sensory experience. It is no longer the eye alone that perceives, it is the whole body that feels the power of the forces in the work.
The artist deploys reflection on the constant flux of the world. Her coastlines, swept by the tides, reveal porous borders and shapes of monumental fragility. In the place where land and sea meet, ceaselessly eroding and transforming each other, Aurore Bagarry questions our place in the face of these vast timescales. She reminds us that landscape is written collectively, carved out by water, wind and the shifting plates of the earth, long before any human intervention.
As we contemplate her works, we are encouraged to feel our humility in the face of geological time, to become aware of the ephemeral nature of our own scale. The artist does not seek to tame nature, but to resonate with it, and to grasp its very essence: raw beauty, tranquil force, and constant reinvention. The Aurore Bagarry exhibition immerses us in the matter making up the world, in an intimate dialogue with the elements making up our planet, inviting us to look beyond the surface, and see where time takes physical shape.
The Aurore Bagarry exhibition is further enhanced by a unique voice, that of the artist Vava Dudu (1970). Invited to cast her eye over the ‘coasts’ of Aurore Bagarry, Vava Dudu takes us to other shores, those of the Caribbean, via a poetic and sensory exploration. Her words are woven from the sensations and rhythms of the island, and converse with the mineral and temporal qualities of the photographic images. This unique gesture invites us to see how land and sea, whether polar or tropical, murmur universal stories, transformed by the prism of vibrant responsiveness.
The project From the Coast has been produced as part of the ‘Great West’ research and creative residency supported by the Neuflize OBC Enterprise Foundation and the Ateliers Médicis and thanks to individual support for the creation of DRAC Bretagne. In partnership with the Gwinzegal Arts Centre, Guingamp and FRAC Bretagne, Rennes.
Aurore Bagarry is a French photographer and video artist, graduated from Gobelins School in Paris in 2004 and from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 2008. Through the logic of the photographic atlas and the practice of walking, she offers a personal reading of the landscape by creating an inventory of forms sometimes fragile despite their monumental scale (Glaciers, 2012–2018), or the barely perceptible result of slow erosion (Roches, 2016– 2020). Her research has been supported by the LVMH Prize in 2008, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2009, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (France) in 2013 and 2015, the Individual Creation Grant from DRAC Bretagne in 2017, and the Centre d’Art GwinZegal in 2019 for her series Roches (2016–2020). In 2020, she was selected for the public commission Regards sur le Grand Paris #4, initiated by CNAP and Ateliers Médicis.
Her work has been exhibited in several major institutions: the artothèque of Annecy, Centre d’Art GwinZegal, Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Roger Quilliot Art Museum in Clermont-Ferrand, Hautetour Museum in Saint-Gervais, La Filature in Mulhouse, the Museum of Art and History in Saint-Denis, and the French Ministry of Culture in Paris. She has also participated in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and festivals such as Jeune Création #69 at the Fondation Fiminco, Les Photaumnales in Beauvais, Photo London, Paris Photo, Photodoc in Paris, L’Image Publique in Rennes, La Semaine des Arts de Paris 8 in Saint-Denis, Les Instants Vidéos Numériques et Poétiques in Marseille, and the Réseau de l’Âge d’Or in Avignon.
Her books Glaciers, Volumes 1 and 2, were published by h’Artpon Editions in 2015 and 2017. Roches, created in collaboration with Gilles A. Tiberghien, was published by GwinZegal Editions in December 2020. In 2022, h’Artpon published the complete, large-format version of Glaciers, bringing together the first two volumes along with a new photographic series produced in the Chablais massif. In 2025, as part of its exhibitions at the GwinZegal art center, the Frac Bretagne and Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Editions GwinZegal is dedicating a book to the De la côte series. Since 2015, she has been represented by Galerie Sit Down in Paris.
