Incidental Gestures
The photographic ensemble Incidental Gestures proceeds from what is lost, missing, absent. This photographic series revolves around the repossessing of archive images, that Agnès Geoffray manipulates until reaching a different reality.
The image is retouched, counterfeited, reinvented; the original image is therefore lost: it only survives as a ghost of the original self. The artist sheds a light on those manipulations able to throw a pre-existing image into a new reality. The dramatic potential of the same image, of the same gesture can be highlighted or downplayed. Overwhelmingly inspired by well-known manipulated images seen under totalitarian regimes, Incidental Gestures subtly explores the notion of victim. This manipulation allows Agnès Geoffray to ask for forgiveness, restoring the victims’ dignity (she covers a woman with a dress at the Liberation, or recreates the face on a broken head). Other times she works in the opposite direction, highlighting the dramatic dimension of a previously common scene.
Agnès Geoffray’s project is part of the group exhibition Archivi del futuro, curated by Diane Dufour, Elio Grazioli and Walter Guadagnini.
