Photographs captured primarily at dusk—a time when shadows lengthen, colours are transformed by the fading light, and a sense of mystery pervades the scene. Vintage gelatin silver prints of a snowbound Russia in the early nineties, alongside recent digital colour prints of Aubrac and Japan.
ENTRE CHIEN ET FLOU As the title suggests, the photographs in this exhibition were captured primarily at dusk—a time when shadows lengthen, colours are transformed by the fading light, and a sense of mystery pervades the scene. The blur is not an aesthetic choice but a natural corollary of the photographer’s way of working. As he walks along, images come to him obliquely, much like memories glimpsed in a dream. Sharpness is not what interests him — he is in motion when pressing the shutter, whence the resulting blur. The colours proliferate, creating a third dimension in the landscape.The exhibition features the artist’s vintage gelatin silver prints from the early nineties, made while wandering aimlessly through a snowbound Russia that had itself lost its bearings after perestroïka, alongside his recent digital colour prints (2018-2025) set in the familiar surroundings of Aubrac and, at the other extreme, Japan.
DANIEL ANIZON Born in Nantes and based between Paris and Aubrac, Daniel Anizon is a photographer-author with an unconventional background. After completing a PhD in Economics in 1973, he spent three years travelling the world alone without a camera—a foundational experience recounted in his 2021 memoir Sans raison ni maison. He first took up photography in 1982, and his artistic vision was further shaped by his discovery of Japan in 2018. His career is marked by prestigious distinctions, notably the Prix Ilford (1984), the Prix Médicis Hors les Murs (1987) for his work on Canadian trappers, and the Prix News at the Rencontres d’Arles (1988). He has held international residencies in Canada and the United States, and celebrated 40 years of photography with a presentation at Gens d’images/ADAGP in Paris in 2024. His works are featured in major public collections, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Still active today, he recently exhibited at the Maison Heinrich Heine in Paris (2021) as well as at the Galerie Mind’s Eye in 2026.
Born in Castellón de la Plana, Spain, Ignacio “Nacho” Gómez Sales studied photography at the EASD in Valencia and the EASD Serra i Abella in Barcelona. He then went on to specialize in architectural photography at the IEFC in Barcelona. In 2008, he left Barcelona and moved to Dijon, where he completed an internship at the Côte-d’Or’s Architecture, Environment and Town Planning Council (CAUE21). He settled permanently in Paris in 2009, where he has lived and worked ever since. Between 2010 and 2013, he completed a Master of Fine Arts specialising in Photography and Contemporary Art at Paris 8 University. In 2017, his series on South Korea was selected in “Descubrimientos Photoespaña” in Madrid. In 2018 he made a self-edited book entitled London. Since 2002, he has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions, notably in Castellon and Barcelona, but also in Paris, Orense and Gandia, as well as in specialised photography media. Since 2009, he has been combining photography with his work at the Centre Pompidou bookshop.
PRÉSENCES
When I take photographs, I try to ensure that my images help to analyse the configuration of the space represented, its genealogy, and the use made of it by those who live there and those who have lived there. On the other hand, alongside this analytical aspect, there is an irrational aspect in my work. I choose places that somehow appeal to me not just for what they are, but for what they have been, for what is real and ghostly about them, for how their past is, at the same time, present, like wrinkles in the skin. As Italo Calvino says in Invisible Cities, the city is made up of the relationship between the measurements of its space and the events of its past. As if this space harboured a strange presence, and photography was the medium that transcribed it. Therein lies the interest for me in photographing places.
The photographs in this exhibition, taken in France, Spain and Italy between 2005 and 2019, are divided into two sections. In the first part, we essentially find traces. Ruins and city walls create an echo between a latent past and an ongoing present. Just as light and time work on the surface of photographic film, a kind of memory is also recorded in these stone and concrete surfaces, whose juxtaposition is an array of temporary layers, to which urban gardens and plants growing wild alongside constructions are sometimes invited.
In the second part, daylight has departed, and we find ourselves at night, that temporary space where people sleep, and which in popular culture is always linked, among other things, to the unknown, danger and ghost stories. Even if electric lighting in modern cities no longer leaves room for total darkness, the dim light that bathes surfaces modifies them, changing their colours and shapes. A banal, everyday object can thus become an enigmatic, mysterious object. These photographs take us on a nocturnal stroll through a city without inhabitants, where urban elements such as trees, doors, windows and railings are the sole protagonists. The photographs were taken with tripod and long exposures, in some cases transforming the darkness of night into the light of day.
We know Christian Poncet for his beautiful pinhole camera photographs, twice presented at Mind’s Eye in the exhibitions “Le songe des rives” (2018) and “Metropolis” (2021).
His new exhibition, “North Light”, shows us another facet of the photographer’s work. Mostly in colour, these images were taken mainly in northern France and southern England, where the colder light brings enhanced clarity and contrast. Christian Poncet’s favorite motifs – geometric framing and isolated figures or structures – are accentuated by an inspired use of color and shadow. The sea is often present as a backdrop.
THE NORTH
Born in Lyon, Christian Poncet lives in Haute-Savoie and for the last twenty years has been photographing the surrounding lakes and mountains, all magnificent and varied landscapes that many photographers dream of. Yet, over time, these beautiful spaces have become so familiar to him that he no longer notices them, at least not with the photographer’s eye, always on the lookout for new images.
The North has always attracted him. He can’t explain it: is it the ‘monotony’ of the landscapes, flat and uniform, the changing light, or that very special atmosphere that breaks with his usual surroundings? In 2012, he set off on a week-long journey from the Bay of the Somme to Belgium, from Cayeux-sur-mer to Ostend.
“That month of May was cool and rainy, the grey sandy beaches were deserted, with only a few solitary walkers struggling to make headway against the wind in their mackintoshes. There was nothing to encourage me to take out the camera.”
“But how could I resist the colourful, haphazard shacks of Berck-plage, its outdated white buildings or, a little further on, the seafront of Stella-plage: this dark stone “wall” facing the sea, overlooked by a vast car park and a wasteland with no future – with the only guardian being this bar-restaurant with the tempting sign “frites – gaufres – crèpes”.
Since then, he has returned to the region regularly, in spring or late summer. Little by little, the images have accumulated, and now he could turn the page, go elsewhere, discover other horizons. But no, the North awaits him, for a long time to come. February 2018
Norilsk, 1995, Lénine © Daniel Anizon
Peyrebesse, hiver 2020 © Daniel Anizon
Le Bès, été 2019 © Daniel Anizon
Yanaka, 2023 © Daniel Anizon
Japan 2025 © Daniel Anizon
Norilsk 1995 © Daniel Anizon
Aubrac 2018 © Daniel Anizon
