About decline - fragments -
(Notice, Abattoirs Museum collection)

   "Gaël Bonefon is one of a generation of artists who use photography to express their feelings of a disaster-bound world, in which they do not recognize themselves and in which they are not in their place. « This world is worn out, tense, exhausted, and yet it does not die » he writes, ruling out any hope of rebirth. Or of escape : indigestion and hangovers are the price to pay.
The flow of images, a succession of hallucinated flashes of day to day life shape a long poem of dark romaticism. Despite, or maybe on account of the fact that these caught-in-flight scenes are void of action, their intensity is at it’s height. Because Gaël Bonnfon has his own idea of when the decisive moment is, and concerns himself entirely with this instead of considering it purely as an observation. His pictures not only reveal his view of the world, but state loudly – scream – how he feels in its midst.
  Their crepuscular tone is accentuated by the use of rudimentary cameras, out of date films which give badly defined, raw images, where blurs, overexposure, lens aberration, colour shifts…
dissolve forms, modify colour and abolish shades, leaving ample space for accidents and other inconsistencies. The pictures are abused, dirty, sensitive, like the people within them. They bring out an even more poignant reality that it seems uncertain : what they lose in realism they gain in evocative force.
  Reality merges with fiction and dreams, making stories unfold : a spectral horse and carriage awaits its passengers for the Kingdom of the Dead, a murky parking lot takes on the appearance of a crime scene. This imaginary force is accentuated by the undefinable strangeness brought about by the cross processing (developing slide film in a negative film bath) which contributes to the shift into the unreal of the most everyday scenes. The resulting composite picture, mixing positive and negative, breaks the alternation which is the very principal of the photographic apparatus.
  Gaël Bonnefon’s universe cannot be situated on one or the other side of the mirror, in reality or dream, but exists simultaneously in both, inextricably woven together. « The photographic project, he writes, explicitly evokes the doubles imaginary force"

François Saint-Pierre
 

Elegy for the Mundane
Michaël Soyez (texte de l'exposition à la Galerie du Château d'Eau 2019)

Mélancolie du crépuscule
Sébastien Porte (Télérama n°3163)

"Elegy for the Mundane" les aspérités d'un même monde
Julien Hory (Fisheye magazine)

Entre les gens
Paul de Sorbier (texte de l'exposition, Maison Salvan)

Douceurs de la vie violente
Fabien Ribery (L'intervalle)

Elégie du quotidien
Mickaël Soyez (catalogue, Château d'eau)

Une poétique de l'accident
L'intervalle (Entretien par Fabien Ribery)

About decline
(Texte de l'exposition / Galerie du Château d'eau)

Temps Zéro
Mina Lenvka (site web)

Elle est où la baballe?
Olivier Michelon (catalogue, Afiac 2013)

Les herbes fauves
Arnaud Fourrier (catalogue, Afiac 2013)

About decline - fragments -
François Saint-Pierre (notice, collection du Musée des Abattoirs)

59 km
Michel Métayer (Cheminements 2011)

L'entraînement
David Chaignon

About decline
Marine Eric (exposition Jeune création, Le Centquatre)