French photographer and visual artist, born in Paris in 1983. His work combines documentary immersion with conceptual research.
Pierre-Elie de Pibrac lives in a country for several months before photographing its people. The Paris Opera Ballet in 2013. Cuba for Desmemoria, Prix Levallois 2018. Japan for Hakanai Sonzai, Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2021. His work is exhibited internationally.
For you, he opened the doors of his laboratory.
HIS PRACTICE
The method doesn't change from one project to the next. Travel with Olivia, his wife, and their three children. Arrive, settle in, take the time. "Feel first, understand the people around us, build a situation of trust, and from there, create staged scenes."
Kilometres are a unit of work: 28,000 covered in Japan, 24,000 in Israel. Geography is a condition. You don't photograph a country from the outside.
In the studio, the register shifts with the subject. Film or digital. Black-and-white or colour. Sometimes "almost mistaking photography for an India ink drawing." Form follows project.
SHOWING THROUGH ABSENCE
Every series rests on the same principle: "showing more through absence than through what is present, speaking of a country in an original, different way."
Pierre-Elie is building an anthropological trilogy around this intention. Hakanai Sonzai in Japan. Israel, in progress, third chapter.
A different place each time. The same restraint. A natural echo of Tricot's own imaginary.
THE LAB
In the laboratory, Pierre-Elie works with Thomas Consani. Fifteen years together. Silver prints take time. Thomas adjusts the exposure, Pierre-Elie watches, they start again. No shortcut. The red light, the paper in the bath, the image appearing slowly.
WHAT'S NEXT
Israel is moving forward. The third chapter of the trilogy. At the end, a book.
"In photography, the book is truly the most important and most accomplished object."
