BIOGRAPHY
Gilles Coulon's work has three ages. Between 1990 and 2002, he drew from Africa the subjects of several years of reporting. The encounter with Mali gives birth to several photographic stories. Being 20 in Bamako embraces the energy of Malian youth, Delta dives into the twists and turns of the inhabitants of the banks of the Niger River, and A President in the Campaign follows, in 1997, the electoral tour of Alpha Oumar Konaré. From the 2000s, he moved away from the documentary form and began searching for a new poetics. The result is White Night , a work on neon lights, photographs taken during his travels around the world. A form of nocturnal wandering in search of a universal and suggestive light.
Gilles Coulon then takes the path of another composition. Definitively rejecting the “beautiful image”, he seeks, through series, to construct a questioning. Notably with Grins , a work on conversation circles in Bamako, in which the circulation of the subject's words leads to that of the spectator's gaze. For Reasons , then, is a photographic story composed in counterpoint where the apparent serenity of the image takes on a completely different dimension by linking itself to the testimony. This echo of time and space leaves the spectator mute in the face of a serious reality of contemporary society. With Outrenuit, a project currently in production, Gilles Coulon returns to explore Africa to try to represent Darkness, its material, its rhythm. Gilles Coulon is a member of the Tendance Floue collective.
