Alain Guiraudie

Alain Guiraudie’s photographs record ordinary events that feature nothing other than themselves. They capture time and frame a space. When set alongside his films and novels, these photos could be taken for location snapshots. That’s what they look like. And sometimes that’s what they are. However, Guirauidie doesn’t see them as a step in his work. 

Here, for the photographer, lies the desire to capture on a (photographic) film configurations (people, places…) without them becoming a (cinematic) film. What does Guiraudie seek out, day and night, in these peri-urban zones, these French and European towns? Varieties of genre scenes that have produced themselves. Using a 50 mm lens, which is reputed for being worthy, distant and not overdoing it, they find a balance and are articulated around a palette, a kind of pictorial elegance, related to painting.

Photographic fixity (as opposed to cinematographic dynamics) sets a situation and all its particulars into a frozen totality; these photographs do not invite the viewer into an interpretative examination, they record facts, each one being of an equal, legible importance. 

Recent and upcoming exhibitions include Crèvecœur, Paris (FR), Fondation Cartier & RATP, Paris (FR), Centre d’art de Soule-ARTETXE, Tardets (FR), Buchholz, New York (US), Forde, Geneva (CH), Le Château - Centre d’Art Contemporain et du Patrimoine d’Aubenas, Aubenas (FR), Le Consortium, Dijon (FR). 

Alain Guiraudie’s second solo show at Crèvecœur will open on February 12, 2026.