Pierre Gonnord

(Cholet, France, 1963)

Portrait photographer, he develops his work around individuals belonging to groups and communities with a strong cultural identity, located on the margins. People who belong to groups but who are interested individually to capture the life carved into their faces. His main works focus on mining communities in northern Spain, gypsies in Portugal and African-American communities. The visibility and memory of faces is a constant component in his work. He formulates his portraits under classical representation patterns, uses natural light and the face is embedded in a dark and neutral background and the color vibrates intensely. In 2008 he won the Photography Prize of the Community of Madrid. In 2010 the “Venice in Peril” Foundation invited him, along with other photographers, to create a series of works inspired by the city for the 2011 Venice Biennale and which were shown in the San Giorgo Maggiore basilica. In 2014 he won the Alcobendas International Photography Award. His photographs have been seen in individual exhibitions of public entities such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris 2005), Casa Asia (Barcelona, 2006), the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville (2006), Les Rencontres d'Arles (2008 ), the Centro Internacionale di Fotografia (Milán, 2009), the Sala Alcalá 31 (Madrid, 2009) and more recently the CEART (Fuenlabrada 2014), the Museum of Human Evolution (Burgos 2018) and the Arquería de los Nuevos Ministerios ( Madrid 2020). His work has also been exhibited in the galleries Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid/Seville), Miguel Marcos (Barcelona), Hasted & Kraeutler (New York), Filomena Soares (Lisbon), Leica Gallery (London), Urs Stahel (Beijing), Le Hangar (Brussels) and MC2 (Milan).

Within the VI framework of the international photography festival PHotoEspaña 03 under the heading “NosOtros: Identidad y alteridad” the exhibition Transient Identities was held, in which Gonnord exhibited his photographs.