Matthieu Gafsou: Terres Compromises

31st August 2016 Documentary, Landscapes, Photo Features 3282

The full body of pictures that makes up Terres Compromises is rich in subtlety, curiosity and a wry and unabashed intelligence. Photographer Matthieu Gafsou set out to document an admittedly subjective, but nevertheless engaged and inquisitive experience of travelling around Israel, Palestine and Jordan with the various divisive and explosive conflicts that have long defined that region in full view of his everyday thought process. His photographs delineate inequalities and anachronisms, ironies and apparent non-sequiturs, draw stark comparison between public, religious, private and political space, probe identities and histories, and at no point shy away from interrogating how much photography can address the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa).

Matthieu Gafsou (CH, 1981) lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. After completing a master of arts in philosophy, literature and cinema at the Université de Lausanne, he studied photography at the School of Applied Arts in Vevey. Since 2006, Gafsou has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and published five books. In 2009 Gafsou was awarded the prestigious “Prix de la fondation HSBC pour la photographie” and subsequently was invited to contribute to the Aperture Foundation’s 2010 reGeneration2 exhibition. In 2014, Lausanne’s influential Musée de l’Elysée hosted Gafsou’s solo show titled Only God Can Judge Me. In parallel to his artistic practice, Gafsou is on faculty at the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL).

Website: gafsou.ch