In 2006, after several years spent working glass for artists, Gilles Pourtier decided to become an artist himself. He opted for photography as his main avenue of expression, but his use of the medium bears no relation to the Pictorialist trend or the indexical practice of Conceptualism. His agenda is closer to that of the photographic investigation: consider the quasi-ethnographic vein of his series Les Voleurs (Thieves, 2010) and more recently La ligne d’ombre (The Shadow Line, 2013), created on the islands of Batz and Ouessant in a collaboration with Anne-Claire Broc’h.

His modus operandi involves a kind of vernacular inventory of the peculiarities underlying the ordinariness of everyday spaces, acts and gestures. As in the wonky Constructivism that marries a wall shelf to a power socket and an electric radiator to a fireplace – two photos from the Le Château sequence of 2009 – Pourtier’s series and books reveal a sensibility that does away with indexical objectivity and poignancy so as to capture the everyday without actually appropriating it. His pictures are free of all residual trace of visual imperialism; on the contrary, his approach consists in laying bare the indeterminacy hidden behind appearances. In giving up the manual activity of glassmaking Pourtier distanced himself from the gesture of the artist/demiurge. Through photography he gives free rein to fragile documenting by a watcher whose means of agency are curiosity and framing.

Gallien Dejean