Portraits by Gilles Porte

Gilles Porte
Parc des Bains, Lons-le-Saunier, July 15 - August 15, 2010

Solo exhibition of photographer and movie director, Gilles Porte.

2010

  • Portraits

  • July 15 juillet-August 15 2010
    La Maison de La vache qui rit, Lons-le-Saunier.
    Artist: Gilles Porte
    Curators: Laurent Fiévet & Silvia Guerra
    In collaboration with the town of de Lons-le-Saunier.

“I have a daughter who is 5 and half: Syrine. From her first school year, Syrina had to create with her classmates a book of characters. Every month, they had to draw a character in their book, without any specific instruction. It has been three years now that the characters appear and evolve through time. When I discovered Syrine’s work at her nursery school, I thought of an idea for a project mixing drawing and photography. It has been three years now that I began with Juliette Robert (graphist and also parent) working at the nursery school with our children: taking a photograph every year of all of the children (6 classes, 170 children at a time) and gather their self-portraits made with a white pencil on a black paper sheet. We then scan each drawing and put it next to the photo of its creator.
From this project was made a poster, distributed at the end of the year to the famillies, before Syrine and her classmates go to elementary school where their drawings will be much more controlled… Since professionnal travels brought me to various countries (Kenya, Egypt, Tunisia), I continued my project, using the same materials ( a white pencil and a black paper sheet) to gather new characters… Today I have near 1.000 characters and I would like to expand my collection…”

Gilles Porte
Gilles Porte was born on May 11th, 1965 in Lyon, he is a photographer and a film director.
He was the camera assistant in 1989 for Jacques Audiard, Marcel Carné, Raoul Ruiz, Maroun Bagdadi, Patrice Cherreau, Costa Gavras, Xavier Durringer… Then the director of photography in 1998 for John Lvoff, Christian Philibert, Xavier Durringer, Olivier Jahan, Pierre Javaux, Jilani Saadi, Abbas Fadhel…
‘Quand la Mer Monte’ was his first full-length feature film that he co-directed with actress Yolande Moreau in 2003. He was also the director of photography for this movie.

Official website: http://www.gillesporte.fr/