Aline
Diépois

&

Thomas
Gizolme

Aline Diépois & Thomas Gizolme

biography

French, born in 1973 and 1967.

If it isn’t uncommon for two photographers to collaborate as a couple on one-off projects, it is even more unusual that they build one project with two pairs of eyes. This is the case for Aline Diépois and Thomas Gizolme who, for the last ten years, have thought, created and produced their series together. For them it’s not just an event, an exercise, taking a risk or playing a game, but a way of being in the world and looking at it. As the popular English expression goes “It takes two to tango” and their visual and loving composition is remarkable in more ways than one.
Until now, they had preferred to keep their works private. The publication by Steidl of the book Abstrakt Zermatt last winter gave them the impetus and the inclination to show them publically.
They play with spoiled and out-of-date chemistry and the little faults in the construction of their home-made darkrooms. Their images, often dreamlike and misty, with light leakages, accidents of chemistry, and sometimes bordering on abstraction, speak of the fragility of the persons and the world, the limits of perception, the intensity of emotion in front of a sublime landscape.
Abstrakt Zermatt is a visual journey through the Zermatt region in Switzerland (from where Aline Diépois originates), composed of small Polaroids and large format prints, The deterioration of the films, the effect of the cold and the altitude on the chemistry, with, here and there, sometimes, the trace of a snowflake fallen into the gelatine, make their images something beyond landscape photography, and places them on a pictorialist path, printing memories, traces and feelings.

White Isles of the South Sea, the second series on show here, tells of the disappearance of the Kiribati islands, a small archipelago lost in the South Pacific and condemned by global warming. The prints show the soft or sparkling touches of the sea at different times of the day, the delicate, blurred Polaroids gently tell of a paradise that is dying and drowning relentlessly. Aline Diépois and Thomas Gizolme accompany this series with sound recordings (wind, sand, waves washing onto the shore) and a film without words. The disappearance is implicit but nevertheless present in each image and the two artists have benevolently held onto some traces of a heavenly, condemned world.
Aline Diépois and Thomas Gizolme continue their photographic liaison and complicity, with a project devoted to the disappearance of a man and the remains of his life. Faced with their work, which is as rare in the symbiosis of their gaze as in the delicacy of their writing and their subject matter, one can only wait with impatience to know where their love and artistic waltz will lead them, their love at work, as it were.

Their work is regularly exhibited throughout Europe. They are the authors of several artists’ books and have published two books, Dust Book and Abstrakt Zermatt, with Editions Steidl.

SEries

White Islands of the South Sea, 2018

In the 19th century, miners used small canaries to ensure their safety. Sensitive to toxic gas fumes undetectable to humans, the bird served as a reference probe: when it fainted or died, the miners evacuated the mine, aware that an explosion was imminent.

Abstrakt Zematt, 2013

Abstrakt Zermatt is a photographic journey through the Swiss Alps with the city of Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn as its base camp.

Dust Book, 2009

It all started when we decided to run away from Paris and catch up with the desert, over in Tucson, Marfa, Willcox and other secluded places in the States.

White Islands of the South Sea, 2018

In the 19th century, miners used small canaries to ensure their safety. Sensitive to toxic gas fumes undetectable to humans, the bird served as a reference probe: when it fainted or died, the miners evacuated the mine, aware that an explosion was imminent.

Abstrakt Zematt, 2013

Abstrakt Zermatt is a photographic journey through the Swiss Alps with the city of Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn as its base camp.

Dust Book, 2009

It all started when we decided to run away from Paris and catch up with the desert, over in Tucson, Marfa, Willcox and other secluded places in the States.

White Islands of the South Sea, 2018

In the 19th century, miners used small canaries to ensure their safety. Sensitive to toxic gas fumes undetectable to humans, the bird served as a reference probe: when it fainted or died, the miners evacuated the mine, aware that an explosion was imminent.

Abstrakt Zematt, 2013

Abstrakt Zermatt is a photographic journey through the Swiss Alps with the city of Zermatt at the foot of the Matterhorn as its base camp.

Dust Book, 2009

It all started when we decided to run away from Paris and catch up with the desert, over in Tucson, Marfa, Willcox and other secluded places in the States.

video

White Isles of the South Sea, 2017
–
On the water’s surface, a thin band of sand lingers on a belt of iridescent foam. Nothing is more gracious than these white islands barely emerging above the waves. Under the blazing sun, time comes to a halt.

In Tarawa, a single road links the North and the South, overloaded with cars, motorcycles and minibuses. Behind clouds of dust whipped up by the incessant coming and going of vehicles, the inhabitants slowly, very slowly pace up and down the nameless road. The air’s density here sometimes resembles a caress on the skin when, from the sparking sea, a peaceful murmur briefly rises. As if one could feel the world and its deceptive impression of being a welcoming place, made to fit man’s strangest dreams and desires.

However, the lagoon is polluted and rusting car parts pile up in heaps. Each tide disrupts the waste gripping onto the mangroves. And the ocean waves wear down the shore a little more every day. They break over the useless sea walls and endlessly nibble at the fragile territory. Unhurriedly, the village people consolidate their absurd remparts and reconstruct their houses in vain. And at times it rains in the middle of the dry season. Paradise is falling apart.

Interviews

Exposition “Abstrakt Zermatt & White Isles of the South Sea” (2/2)
Galerie VU’
—
2018

Interview of Aline Diépois and Thomas Gizolme on the occasion of their exhibition at the Galerie VU’, from Febrary 03rd to March 03rd 2018 (part 2).

Exposition “Abstrakt Zermatt & White Isles of the South Sea” (1/2)
Galerie VU’
—
2018

Interview of Aline Diépois and Thomas Gizolme on the occasion of their exhibition at the Galerie VU’, from Febrary 03rd to March 03rd 2018 (part 1).

BOOKS

Abstrakt Zermatt, 2017

Steidl – 2017

Abstrakt Zermatt, 2017

Steidl – 2017

Abstrakt Zermatt, 2017

Steidl – 2017