Villa Albertine’s Resident Artist Talk with Geoffroy Mathieu

Geoffroy Mathieu’s photography questions how environmental and political issues are made tangible in the landscape. Whether working alone, with a partner, or as part of a collective, he engages in travel- or immersion-based projects to document shifting territories, in-between spaces, and objects and actions that reveal resistances in the ways places are utilized.

Whether commissioned by local authorities or cultural institutions, created during residencies, or stemming from personal initiatives, his photography series are pursued as poetic investigations. The encounters with reality that inspire the images are informed by rigorous documentary preparation. Utilizing the mobility of photography, which serves as both fact and fiction, he constructs situated narratives.

In collaboration with associations, collectives, and researchers, Mathieu strives to disseminate images beyond the art world, aiming to give them a place or form of use within public debate to support causes and commitments focused on caring for or mending the environment.

A graduate of the French Higher School of Photography (ENSP) in Arles, Mathieu lives and works in Marseille. He presents his works as publications (Actes Sud, Poursuite, Filigranes, Zoème, Wildproject, Building Books), through solo or collective exhibitions, and, more recently, through walked performances. In 2021, he participated in the fourth edition of Regards du Grand Paris (Ateliers Médicis and the French Centre for Visual Arts). The following year, he won the French National Library’s “Radioscopy of France” Major Photojournalism Commission. In 2023, he co-published a book with Jordi Ballestra, Anti-installation (published by Building Books), supported by the French Center for Visual Arts (CNAP) publishing grant.