Experimental nominee

In his series titled Sette fotogrammi della luce (1969), Giulio Paolini enlarges his photographs to the point of revealing the grain of the image. He thus demonstrates that photography is essentially composed of silver halide crystals that darken when exposed to light. However, by delving into the core of photography, he destroys its primary functionality in the process : his images become abstract, representing nothing but the photographic principle itself.
Following a similar approach, Dark Matter aims to uncover the iconic material of digital photography. Stemming from an experiment seeking to minimize the operator's intervention during the image production process , I goes against the very definition of photography as writing with light. Here, the camera alone generates the image, the exposure starting automatically when powered on, lens covered, and ending once the battery depleted. The result is an image entirely composed of digital noise, areas of which were then randomly selected by computer software and enlarged to the same size and resolution as the original image.

Born in 1984, Tommy Goguely lives and works in Bordeaux. A graduate in fundamental physics and holder of a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, he started photography as a self-taught amateur. After a three-year course at the Bordeaux Fine Arts School, he redirected his practice towards works with more conceptual influences. Fuelled by image theories, his experimentation now mostly revolves around questioning the photographic medium through the lens of contemporary digital society.

In 2019, he initiated a large body of works titled "Palimpsests". This term refers to a parchment where the original writing has been erased to make way for a new text on the same support. It accurately reflects the intent behind this project. Indeed these photographs take the form of contemporary rewritings of iconic works from the history of photography, translated into the new context of digital society. Initiating a dialogue with techniques and theories of the past, they offer a reflection about the concept of post-photography and question the evolution of the medium in the era of its alleged disappearance.