MATHIEU PERNOT
THE GORGANS
CURATED BY MATHIEU PERNOT
I met the Gorgan family in 1995, while studying at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles. I knew nothing about these communities, and was unaware that this line of Roma had been in France for over a century. My first works were in black and white, placing me in a documentary tradition in the face of what I still found strange. The discovery of several archival documents that they possessed quickly taught me that a diversity of forms and points of view were necessary to take account of the density of life that came into my view. It was in 2013, more than 10 years after those first photos, that we met again, as if it were yesterday. In their company, I lived an experience which surpasses the experience of photography. The exhibition recreates the circumstances of each member of the family, and recounts the story that we wrote together, face to face, then side by side.
