Aglaé Bory

© Aglae Bory

Aglaé Bory is part of a new generation of photographers who place people at the heart of their photographic work. She has shaken off the codes of humanistic photography and developed an aesthetic and fictional narrative that draw on a documentary approach. Aglaé Bory’s work is rooted in the sometimes tragic reality of a society that does not give equal opportunities to all. The figure of the human, placed at the centre of her photography, is accurately presented before us, without theatricality.

Trained in art history and a graduate of the ENSP photography school in Arles, Aglaé Bory also attaches great importance to form, with a finely worked aesthetic that explores the codes of artistic photography. It is undoubtedly this dual approach that has won her renown and exhibitions at many festivals. Aglaé Bory made a name for herself on the artistic scene with her work Corrélations, a series of self-portraits that were later included in the BNF public library collections. She also contributed to the Flux, une société en mouvement project commissioned by the French National Contemporary Art Fund with her documentary project about exile, entitled Figures Mobiles. Her work Odyssées also secured her the 2020 Prix Caritas de la Photo Sociale photography award.

In this work, produced during a creative residency in La Gacilly, Aglaé Bory questions the intimate and poetic space of the horizon. Elusive and yet omnipresent in our landscapes, the horizon is a shifting line, a focal point for our eyes and our thoughts, but also a dividing line between the visible and the invisible. This series was designed as an installation and addresses the verticality of the horizon, of the beholder and of the subject. This photographic approach questions the way we live in a world that is shared yet plural. She appropriates the stories of the people she meets and reinvents them through her compositions and the superimposed narratives on her images.

“We need shared horizons more than ever. We make images to create meaning, to reinvent the ties that hold a society together, to re-establish some common ground, a changing identity and, hence, to make history.” By residing in the very heart of these landscapes and meeting those who inhabit them, work with them and dream of them, Aglaé Bory invites us to view and imagine the infinite possibilities of our rurality.