All by my selfie
Mathieu Pernot, born in 1970 in Fréjus, lives and works in Paris. After completing his history of art degree at Grenoble, he begun studying at the National School of Photography at Arles, which he graduated from in 1996.
His work loosely follows the approach of documentary photography but often diverts from its protocols in order to explore alternative formulas and to tell more than one story at once. Pernot’s starting point is often either a series where characters, chronologies or themes interlink, or a response to archival images. In all cases, this nomadism of images and subjects underlines his desire to avoid a one-way narrative of history. The perpetual displacement of his images thus evokes a reality that is far from fixed or unchanging.
Jeu de Paume
"I first met the Gorgan family in 1995 whilst studying in Arles. I knew nothing of their community or anything about the history of the Roma in France. I took my first shots of them in black and white, choosing to use a traditional documentary style when capturing people who at that point were still strangers to me. The discovery of the few items they possessed led to my decision to use a diverse range of forms and points of view in order to fully capture the intensity of their lives. In 2013, ten years after I took the first photographs, we met again, and it felt like no time had passed at all. The experiences I shared with this family go beyond photography. The exhibition reconstructs the individual destinies of each family member. It traces the history we have built together. Face to face. And now, side by side."
Mathieu Pernot