Fine Art nominee

The title Drive-By Theaters refers to Hiroshi Sugimoto and his Drive-In Theaters series, initiated in 1978. This series is part of a larger collection of works that focuses on movie theaters, captured through long-exposure photography, where the exposure time precisely matches the duration of the film projected on the screen. Here, the same technique has been reused to capture - this time not American drive-ins, but video advertising billboards located on the outskirts of commercial areas. Much like Sugimoto's Theaters before them, these images question the passage of time, but also illustrate its acceleration in today’s society. The blank screen, a witness to the overflow of information turning into nothingness, serves here as a metaphor for the continuous flow of images in the digital age.

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.