Country of LA GACILLY
Published on June 20, 2024
At La Gacilly, the return of summer goes hand in hand with a new edition of its famous Photo Festival. The opportunity to exhibit, in the open air, the best of contemporary photographic, documentary and artistic creation. Faithful to its attachment to the relationships between humans and their environment, this year the Festival offers around twenty galleries in the alleys, gardens and streets of La Gacilly.
Since its creation 21 years ago, the La Gacilly Photo Festival has been imbued with a strong environmental conscience. According to Cyril Drouhet, curator of the festival’s exhibitions, this is due to its founder Jacques Rocher: “ I think it was quite visionary 21 years ago since we didn’t yet talk a lot about all these issues that concern us like global warming. “. The exhibition curator underlines the fact that this emphasis on Man’s relationship with the Earth does not involve, à la Gacilly, “a punitive ecology” but “a positive ecology”: “ Being positive also means showing the beauty of this world, even if there are difficulties in making visitors aware that we must cherish our Earth “.
Like every year, a country, or a region of the world, is highlighted by the La Gacilly Photo Festival. This year, we’re heading to Australia! In his editorial of the Festival book, the exhibition curator describes this country as “ a very distant island-continent, too little known, rarely in the spotlight, so often fantasized about for these virgin and inviolate spaces. “. “ We Europeans don’t know Australia » sums up Cyril Drouhet. On the environmental issue, he notably highlights a mythification of this country: “ We imagine that it is a wonderful country even though it is the second polluter on the planet by number of inhabitants! “. Faced with these Australian policies lagging behind in the fight against climate change, are the photographers of Australians, little known in France: “ They really are whistleblowers. They show the flaws but also propose solutions to these ecological questions “.
Always faithful to this commitment to nature, the La Gacilly Photo Festival also offers an environmental theme: “ Committed looks in the name of beauty “. The Festival aims to be “ a receptacle of these photographers who are concerned with showing a reality which sometimes disturbs, sometimes dazzles us “. Cyril Drouhet explains this ambition to us by presenting the work of Matthew Abbott, an Australian photographer born in 1984. The latter has indeed immortalized the “Black summer”: the season of extremely violent bush fires which, between June 2019 and May 2020, devastated 2.4 million hectares. While many members of the Australian government have tried to deny or ignore the link between climate change and the increase in the number of fires, Matthew Abbott takes on the role of whistleblower: “ I just try to make images that touch people, that are like a punch in the stomach. During these megafires, I met people who had lost everything and were fleeing hell in terrible conditions “. The Australian photographer notably won a World Press Photo for the photo of a kangaroo engulfed in flames, below on the left of the image.
Photographers meet the public this weekend
To discover these twenty photographic galleries engaged in the exceptional setting that La Gacilly offers, come this Friday, June 21 at 4 p.m. at the Artémisia cultural center for the inauguration of the festival. Saturday and Sunday, between conferences, gallery visits with photographers and signing sessions, the festival team has prepared a tailor-made program to inaugurate this 21th editing.
The weekend program:
