A feeling of dispossession and loss of terrain, observations of how distinctive forms of space and local culture can be lost to the ravages of globalisation – these are what characterise most of Gilles Saussier’s projects, including his initial photographic work on Chatou island, then in the old quarter of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the working class districts of Nantes. In all of these projects, he focussed on urban or territorial reconfigurations, with the question: how can such places be respected and reinvented? This same question lay behind his previous exhibition in 2007, and his book Studio Shakhari Bazar. With L’Ile d’après ("The island of afterwards"), he is pursuing his reflections on the reappropriation of localities, looking at the Loire estuary in the framework of Envers des villes, endroit des corps ("Backs of towns, fronts of bodies"), the first part of which was exhibited here in 2005.
In L’Ile d’après, a 17-minute video (2006-2007), Saussier filmed himself on an island in the Loire, reading aloud an account of a childhood spent on the river – that of a sand merchant from Ancenis.(1) This documentary performance is a meditation on the ongoing identity of the place name. It uncovers an imagination and an experience of perception that are peculiar to the societies of islands and river banks(2), and in doing so it converges with certain familiar allegorical figures from Saussier’s work: the local child, the hunter, the inhabitant of the island surrounded by a river. L’Ile d’après is accompanied by another performance, Le Gué ("The ford"), which took place in Nantes along the course of a subterranean river between the Erdre and the Loire, in counterpoint with a set of photographs from a 2005 enquiry into the death of a homeless person in Saint-Nazaire, Logé chez l’habitant ("Staying with local people"). This exhibition also gives Gilles Saussier a chance to bring back into play some cartographic portraits from his first project, Living in the fringe, 1998, which featured the life and views of the millions of farmers who maintain a precarious foothold on the islands along the banks of the Brahmaputra and in its delta, on the bay of Bengal. These works have not previously been exhibited in France.
(1) "Itinéraire de Jean Bricard, Jean-Yves Petiteau et Isabelle Rolland", in Interlope, Nantes, Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts, 1994.
(2) "Islands are not only the manifestation of a continent – they also legitimise a permanent relationship to otherness, with regard to history. Outside of consolidation or urbanisation, such territories retain traces of childhood." (Ibid.)
Since the end of the 1990s, Gilles Saussier has been involved in an open-ended form of activity, centring on a number of documentary projects and groups of images – Living in the fringe, Studio Shakhari Bazar, Envers des villes, endroit des corps, Le tableau de chasse, etc. – which he continually revisits, hybridises and recomposes, thereby enriching their interpretability and actuality. His projects syncretise documentary photography and conceptual art, and treat photography as something performative, not simply as image or information.
Solo exhibitions (selection) : Retour au pays, Galerie Zürcher, Paris (2003) ; Bivouac, l’Appartement témoin, Nantes, en collaboration avec l’association Peuple & culture 44 (2004) ; Envers des villes, endroit des corps, Galerie Zürcher, Paris (2005) ; Studio Shakari Bazar 1997-2007, Galerie Zürcher, Paris (2007).
Group exhibitions (selection) : Des Territoires, Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts (ENSBA), Paris (2001) ; Documenta 11 de Kassel (2002) ; Covering the real au Kunstmuseum de Bâle (2005) ; L’archive universelle, la condition du document et l’utopie photographique moderne au MACBA de Barcelone (2008) ; Images d’un renouvellement urbain, Centre d’art le Point du jour, Cherbourg (2008).
Publications (selection) : Living in the fringe, préface « En face de la terre nue » (association Figura, Paris, France 1998) ; « Situations du reportage, actualité d’une alternative documentaire » in Communications, n°71, Le parti pris du document, littérature, photographie, cinéma et architecture au XXe siècle (EHESS, Seuil, Paris, France, 2001) ; Le Ruban documentaire (779 Editions et Société Française de photographie (SFP), Paris, France, 2003) ; Studio Shakhari Bazar (Le Point du jour éditeur, Paris, France, 2006).
