Mathieu Pernot
“Les Gorgan – 1995-2015” seems to be a classic example of documentary photography in which the photographer is participant rather than onlooker. Pernot lived with these Romany gypsies as a friend and witnessed their plight over the years.
The photographs are varied in composition and read like family snapshots. Each major family member has a wall to his or her self so one gets a sense of the people involved. The imagery tends to focus on the people rather than their circumstances though these can be inferred from the backgrounds. Although these people live in poverty on the edge of society, they are portrayed as being very human.
It is their day to day life we see being enacted. The video is showing in a booth at the end of the gallery is more revealing. Rather than showing special moments, it records more ordinary moments, the passage of ordinary life. One becomes more aware of their natural dignity and what they are really like as people.
One series of photographs about Johny born in 1964 shows how much these people age during their lives, a result of the hardship they undergo.