Aurélien Fontanet
Hommes-oiseaux (2013 – 2019)
Focale Gallery proposes Aurélien Fontanet’s work
Hommes-oiseaux 2013 – 2019
‘I don’t know why, but I have always been attracted to the anthropological role of photography. […] Curiosity about the world is one of the keys to photography. Aurélien Fontanet is in this great tradition, photographing “well”, but clearly understanding the essential role that his photographs can have in addition: to help the people he photographs, to participate in helping to make their causes and their dramas known: he travels to the Xikrin in the Amazon jungle, and in addition to his photographs, he tells us about what they are experiencing at a time of the dangers of “civilisation”, in their case the terrible health problems due to the mines that are eating away at their bronchi. Photography in fact is in essence a humanitarian cause: to photograph.’ (Bernard Plossu)
Born in Geneva in 1982 and with a master’s degree in visual arts (HEAD-Geneva), Aurélien Fontanet works in this field as a freelancer. His work has been exhibited in Switzerland and abroad. In particular, the selection of images presented here was made in the Amazon from 2013 to 2019, as an extension of the work of the ethnologist René Fuerst, and was exhibited in 2018 at the Présence(s) Photographie festival in Montélimar.