Aurore Bagarry's 'Roches' at Galerie Sit Down

Aurore Bagarry's exhibition 'Roches' at Galerie Sit Down in Paris, running until April 17, 2021, presents photographs of rocks taken between 2016 and 2020 along the coasts of the English Channel. The series, also published as a book by GwinZegal (100 pages, €30), employs documentary conventions to create a melancholic poetics. Bagarry shoots on gray days, using frontal views, equal sharpness, and no shadows, emphasizing surfaces over volume. The images reveal graphic morphology—shaped by tectonic movements and erosion—and subtle chromatic variations ranging into blues and violets, with vegetation contrasting against ochers and pinks. No human signs or traces appear, distinguishing the work from 1970s landscape photography that highlights human alteration. Instead, Bagarry's series follows her earlier 'Glaciers' (2012-18) and reflects ecological awareness of climate change: rising sea levels from melting ice. 'Roches' also relates to 'Formes de l'eau,' a parallel series made for the Regards du Grand Paris public commission, focusing on water traces in the Paris basin, including fossils and sediments. The work can be seen as a meditation on human disappearance—landscapes after humanity.