Terre de Personne

December 18, 2009 2:30 PM

Pierre Gonnord is a French photographer who specializes in arresting portraiture.His subjects have been described as quasi biblical (Fr). He lives in Madrid, where he currently has an exhibition on called "Terre de Personne." via
posted by Lezzles (12 comments total)

These are superior photos. Thanks for sharing.
posted by Evstar at 2:41 PM on December 18, 2009

like middle ages people. astonishing indeed. go to his website!
posted by billybobtoo at 2:43 PM on December 18, 2009

Exquisite work. Masterful portraits. Thanks for this.
posted by Toekneesan at 2:47 PM on December 18, 2009

Good grief. Incredible.

The conventions of portraiture established in the 16th century remain to this day the most effective.
posted by fire&wings at 3:21 PM on December 18, 2009

Even for a photographer's flash site, this one is hard to use and half the time the photos don't show up correctly or at all.
posted by stavrogin at 3:41 PM on December 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Nice photos, though.
posted by stavrogin at 3:41 PM on December 18, 2009

Nice work, but the site navigation is so annoying I can't be bothered to look at very much of it.
posted by blaneyphoto at 3:53 PM on December 18, 2009

Wow do I like this guy's work. The textures are goddamned sumptuous. Thank you for posting.

fire&wings: yes, that is remarkable, but I also think what's remarkable is how this guy screws with those conventions, in three ways:

1) composition: these portraits are often a little too close for comfort, there is hair sticking right into the edges of the frame which makes for visually alarming tangents, things are often a little off-center, and so on.

2) subject matter: the nestling of old white guys with beards shot with Rembrandty lighting and a painterly affect next to black guys with dreads and earrings and dudes with swimming cap creates a sort of vague unease with the visual code we've gotten used to in the grand old art objects which we are supposed to unquestionably venerate. (note this is not me saying 'the hell with the old masters', this is saying 'it's interesting to question visual codes')

3) medium: kind of like the uncanny valley, it's a strange gesture to make a photographic image of a human purposely look like a hand-made artifact rather than to make an image that tries to capture light more or less as we see it.

This is not to try to 'explain' this guy's work, these are just some thoughts that I had while I was looking at these photos.
posted by voronoi at 4:06 PM on December 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

The portraits are great content- and composition-wise, but the exposure and colour balance of the final images is atrocious. Too damn light, too damn green.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:35 PM on December 18, 2009

If you hover over the bottom of the screen you get thumbnails, which makes nav a little less painful.
posted by delmoi at 4:13 PM on December 19, 2009

I was sure "arresting portraiture" would be something to do with mugshots.
posted by jfwlucy at 6:48 PM on December 19, 2009

Arresting indeed! I think I like the photography of the photographs almost as much. Interesting installations.
posted by kepano at 1:30 PM on December 27, 2009