Artists / Photographers
French photographers are Delphine BALLEY, Bertrand STOFLETH and Alexis BERAR
Italian photographers are Simone LUDOVICO and Simone LEDDI
The Polish photographer is Tomasz KULIGA.
Portuguese photographers is Mauro GENTILE
Ukrainian photographer is Anton Kuba
french photographers
Delphine BALLEY
“Delphine Balley’s universe, which initially took the form of photographic series, is above all a product of memory: personal, but also collective, or rather vernacular. Born in the foothills of the Vercors mountain range, she developed an interest in declining practices and techniques, firstly in her own region, then among people she met and places she visited. But she soon began to reinterpret these memorial elements, adding complex psychological implications of the human essence. She altered ancestral usages, for example, by adapting local traditions to her own themes. Her hallmark series The family album, begun in 2002, depicts her own (imaginary) murder during her (equally imaginary) wedding, and its consequences. And this was the starting point for a family saga that brings together reality and fantasy, real people and pure chimeras. The actors in the fable – those who are really present in the photos – are Balley’s parents, or other members of her family, followed by neighbours and acquaintances, on whom she confers the attributes required by the legend she is in the process of constructing. All of them take part in a story created by Balley herself, with photos that illustrate fragments of an endlessly rewritten mythology. Inventing a “lemon picker” or a “husband mask”, resuscitating a “were-wolf” or a “phantom girl-child”, summoning up a nostalgic memory of bread and butter sprinkled with grated chocolate, or of embroidery, or knitting, she combines reality and fiction in a personal tale whose ramifications distance it, little by little, from the heart of the family.” […]
From a text by Isabelle Bertolotti, 2013. Translated by John Doherty, 2014.
Bertrand STOFELTH
Born in 1978. Lives and works in Lyon, France
Bertrand Stofleth studied art history and the performing arts in Lyon, then photography at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles, from which he graduated in 2002. He explores modes of occupying territory, along with uses and representations of landscapes. His Belvédère series is a memoir based on geographical reconstruction. The photographic observations he has carried out in the Monts d’Ardèche regional nature reserve since 2005 (exhibited at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2012), and in the Hérault valley since 2010, examine territorial transformations over time. And since 2011, he has been doing the same type of work in urban settings, as part of artistic residences at a hospital in Chambéry, and in Bron, near Lyon. Rhodanie, 2007-2014 (realised with FEDER found), is a documentary series whose iconography of the everyday illustrates different ways in which a fluvial environment has been developed and utilised. And he has since embarked on collaborative projects such as La Vallée, with Nicolas Giraud, which looks at the industrial history of the countryside between Lyon and Saint-Etienne. He is also working with the photographer Geoffroy Mathieu on Paysages Usagés, a photographic record of the landscape round the GR2013 hiking trail, which is supported by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (State commission), and Marseille-Provence, as the 2013 European Capital of Culture. He is actually working on a project called about the relationship between the airports and their connections to the cities (in residencies with the CNAP and Atelier Medicis). Furthermore he is a photographer at the Opéra de Lyon since 2005, teaches in schools and academie documentary practice and photography at a large format camera.
Alexis BERAR
Born in 1976. Live and work in Grenoble.
I question through my work, the territory and its representation. How those who live in a territory look at it, practice it. How landscapes are shaped, what are the traces and clues of our uses, our passages. And on the contrary, how this territory influences man in his habitus, what he produces in his physiological and social postures. The photography and the point of view, which accompanies it, become the medium where these questions resonate. I enjoy bringing my eyes, as a complementary element to that of researchers.
Today, I continue and support my body of work on the issue of living in the mountains. In this context I have already realized several works such as Poetics of an estive during the years of 2013-2016 which questions the different uses of a territory of mid-mountain during the summer season, then, they were silent in 2015 in the framework of an ethnological study on hunters of the Upper Giffre valley and sensitive circumferences in 2016, an inventory of buildings, towers and micro landscapes through an exploration of concentric circles centered in Grenoble.
Parallel to these documentary works having for components of given social groups and / or particular territories, I work with more visual, fictional and poetic realizations where the animal is the materia prima like the series drunk winter, Fario and a gastronomy of the rest .
These different works are not impervious to each other and I work so that these different dimensions, documentary and visual artist, appear in watermark in each subject.
italian photographers
Simone LUDOVICO
Simone Ludovico was born in Biella in 1977.
He studied urban, territorial and enviromental planning and graduated at the Polytechnic of Milan in 2003 with a thesis on the relationship between cartography and photography to build a point of view on the territory.
He works like a freelance photographer since 2004; he develops projects in collaboration with Associations that deal with social and urban issues, he conducts photography workshops on explorations of urban spaces in different schools.
He currently lives in Pavia.
Simone LEDDI
Simone Leddi was born in Tortona, Italy, in 1977.
He graduated in 2003 in natural sciences at the University of Pavia. He wrote a thesis on paleontology of vertebrates.
Photography has accompanied him on his nature study trips. He deals with reportage photography and portraits, he has made reports in Turkish Kurdistan, in China and Mongolia. In 2009 he obtained two masters in photography at the John Kaverdash Academy in Milan.
Simone is also a videomaker and has made short films for several years. He teaches visual language in various high schools and has also taught at the University of Pavia.
some short film links and video installations
polish photographers
Tomasz Kuliga
portuguese photographers
Mauro GENTILE
Develop work as multimedia producer – vídeo, audio and graphic design. Trainer, social educator and musician
Curious, observant and attentive to details. Creative, always searching for knowledge, new experiences and ways to contribute to a better world.
Love to be with Family and Friends, meet new people, enjoy Nature and Art, practice Yoga, read and travel.
ukrainian photographers
Anton Kuba
Being a student, in 2000, I was attracted by a fuzzy plan in photographs and I began to study how to get such effect. Since then, until now, I am experimenting with various lenses, cameras, subjects. Right now I love to shoot landscape, architecture and food. And I teach children and adults to love and to be able to take pictures.
My inspiration is in difficulty of taking the picture – it’s nice to “suffer” getting a good shot, to sort out the camera angles, places, to choose what I like, to search how to express emotion and uniqueness of the moment