Matthieu
Gafsou

Enseignements

BLI x ECAL

PHOTOGRAPHY

BLI x ECAL

with Matthieu Gafsou

The collaboration between the ECAL and the BLI touches on contemporary issues that are of particular concern to students at the school: our relationship with minorities and the appropriate way of representing them. For a long time, a paternalistic anthropological attitude was tolerated and even encouraged in the world of photography. Attitudes have changed, and the young artists at the ECAL have developed a relationship of equals with the various communities they have encountered. Creating the images required a language that enabled the students to position themselves in relation to others and to establish protocols in line with their own values and those of the people on the other side of the lens. The images give us a complex, multifaceted panorama of our city's cultural diversity, and show us that encounters and mixes are possible and fruitful. Matthieu Gafsou, photographer and teacher.

Workshop 4x5

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Workshop 4x5

with Matthieu Gafsou

The workshop week 4x5 is both an introduction to the 4x5 technical camera and a way to kickstart a photographic project. Students experience the process of analog shooting, from development to large format printing. This intense week is highly technical, but also focused on developing a photographic language, allowing for a better understanding of the fundamental workings of photography.

Photographic Essays

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Photographic Essays

with Matthieu Gafsou

In the second year, the course Photographic Essays course enables students to exercise a documentary photographic practice –one based on a relationship with reality, with something anchored in the here and now. This year, students worked on a theme related to ecology in the broadest sense: a very specific, concrete starting point (a permaculture garden, Extinction Rebellion activists, documentation of polluted sites, encounters with people working with more-than-human animals), a broader, multiple or personal approach.

Essais photographique

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Essais photographique

with Matthieu Gafsou

The mere mention of the term animal already raises questions; the most general of all is the following: do we, as humans, belong to this kingdom, or have we become totally alien to it ? The aim here is not to answer such a question, but to understand that the divide between humans and non-humans is extremely strong in our society - the only one in human history that has forged such a boundary. Yet the animal is everywhere in our daily lives. There is the animal we eat, or refuse to eat, the one we domesticate, the one that lives in our - its? - environment, the one we hunt, the one we cage in zoos, the one we study, the one we protect, etc... There is now talk of the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity. This context, which is ours today, complicates our relationship with living beings and with animals in particular. We are forced to rethink our relationship with others and become aware that life is a complex network in which we do not have all the space. Moreover, recent scientific research has exploded the Cartesian theory of the animal-machine and demonstrated that we are not the only ones to have developed an interiority. During this year-long project, students were asked to produce a series that addresses one or more of the themes associated with the animal world, in the form of their choice but using reality as raw material.

Pratique photographique

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Pratique photographique

with Matthieu Gafsou

Essais photographique

PHOTOGRAPHY

Essais photographique

with Matthieu Gafsou

Credo

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Credo

with Matthieu Gafsou

From September 20 to November 11, 2018 Opening: September 19 at 18h Between 2017 and 2018, a team of sociologists from the CIC identified, located and documented the 800 or so religious and spiritual communities established in this territory. A class of Bachelor Photography, under the direction of professor and photographer Matthieu Gafsou, traveled through the Canton to meet around twenty of them. Their work gives for the first time an overview of the diversity of beliefs in the region. Schedule Lu, ma: closed Me-ve: 12h to 18h Sa-di: 11h to 17h Price: 6.- (reduced: 4.-) Children (under 16): free Nuit des musées Sept 22 from 2pm to 2am Espace Arlaud Pl. de la Riponne 2bis 1005 Lausanne

Exhibition and book «Un paysage de la modernité»

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Exhibition and book «Un paysage de la modernité»

with Matthieu Gafsou

"Un paysage de la modernité", the first title in the collection "Les Cahiers de l'Ouest" (Editions Infolio), is a study by Bruno Marchand, professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which shows the extent to which the western part of Lausanne bears the mark of the Modern Movement, particularly in its built-up areas and its housing architecture. Within the framework of this book (graphically produced by the Atelier Poisson), second-year students in the Bachelor of Photography program at the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, under the direction of Matthieu Gafsou, have offered their photographic perspectives on this theme. To be discovered in conjunction with the exhibition from October 13 to 21 at the Galerie l'elac. "The students were given the task of making personal images, showing the places in their use. Some of them will sometimes have expanded the territory of their photographic investigations, not for convenience but to reflect the point of view of the inhabitant and his relationship to the neighborhood. In concrete terms, each student was assigned a very precisely delimited area, grouping together one or more housing complexes. For almost a year, they had to submit to the constraint of limiting themselves to this portion of territory. This is one of the most difficult exercises in photography: to make exotic what is so familiar to us that we no longer look at it. All the more so since the area covered is very small and does not allow for stylistic escapes or formal subterfuges. The banal can become picturesque, sublime or beautiful. It is all a question of point of view. And it is by implementing such an approach that one develops one's language. That one learns to make a photograph that is not only subjected to the magnificence of the subject but that also participates in the making of the latter. It is in my opinion when one understands this nuance that one becomes a true photographer. In order to capture something other than the strict surface of the world, you have to immerse yourself in it. Meet the people, dare to do it, do it again, come back again and again. The exercise teaches the permanent struggle of creation against wear and tear or distraction. It also makes it possible to discover that the profession of photographer can hardly be practiced alone. This project has resulted in as many series as there are students. Fifteen series with their own coherence, their aesthetics, their history. For the needs of this thematic booklet, it was necessary to make sure that the visions of each one meet. Rather than detracting from the photographs, this diversity of approaches and styles says a lot, it seems to me, about these discreet residential areas, so typical of Switzerland. It is in the details and micro-events, in the little things, that we discover and understand a little better these "big estates" that we usually do not look at." Text by Matthieu Gafsou, photographer and teacher at ECAL "A Landscape of Modernity" From October 13 to 21, Monday to Friday, 11 am to 5 pm. Book, 19 x 26 cm, paperback with flaps, 186 pages, 186 illustrations: photographs, drawings, maps and plans in black and white and in color. Infolio Editions. ISBN 978-2-88474-385-3. Price CHF 29.- A publication of the communes of western Lausanne: Bussigny - Chavannes-près-Renens - Crissier - Ecublens - Prilly - Renens - Saint-Sulpice - Villars-Sainte-Croix With the support of the State of Vaud, Service Développement territorial DTE and Service Communes et logement DIS as well as the support of Patrimonium Galerie l'elac 5, avenue du Temple CH-1020 Renens www.ecal.ch

Option photo

FOUNDATION YEAR

Option photo

La photographie documentaire, projets personnels.

Option photo

FOUNDATION YEAR

Option photo

La photographie documentaire, projets personnels.