Who said rocks were all gray? Not Aurore Bagarry, whose work is on display at the GwinZegal Art Center in Guingamp, western France. Her photographs, captured along the Atlantic coast, from Brittany to Gironde, and even as far as Martinique, reveal a thousand colorful nuances and meticulous details. From fawn to purple, passing through slate blue and ochre, the exposed rocks, gathered in a beautiful book with a text by the geologist Philippe Boulvais, offer viewers an unexpected rainbow with a bewildering palette. "We always have the impression that rocks are monochrome, but they are colored by history," the photographer explains. "They are tinted by vegetal or animal elements. The moon is gray because there is no life..." The foreshore, where she likes to place her camera, an area subjected to the alternation of tides, is alive and full of color.
In the manner of 19th-century photographers, the photographer has been carrying her heavy analog large format camera (nearly 12 kg of equipment to lug around) since her early days to translate contemporary landscapes into images. Her first passion however was far from the sea. With a family originating from French Alps and a childhood fascination with majestic mountains and their strong imaginative potential, she initially set out to photograph glaciers and their vanishing whiteness. This led to two books being published: Glaciers, volumes I and II.
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