about GD2R
“It’s hard to put into words what it is that GD2R embodies in his work, but maybe that’s the point.
He has such an innate understanding of structure that his subjects are always perfectly supported by everything around them. Some might call this technical ability, but I disagree. Technical ability is certainly present but to reduce him to a technician would be sacrilege, he’s an artist.
The reason I know that his talent is far from just technical is that he is willing to abandon all traditional sense of structure to allow a perfect alive moment to exist in his work. He isn’t bound by the rules of photography.
If this alive moment happens to involve a person he is shooting, it will have come about because of the trust he inspires in his subjects. This is something he does without realising, his urge to communicate is so clearly present that we never see the camera when we look at his subjects, we see the people, and they see us.
Gilles is strong minded, he knows when a picture just works and isn’t afraid to stand by his gut instinct. He makes darkness beautiful, but not by pretending it isn’t darkness. Equally, if there is joy present in his photographs, it is not about showing you the joy, it’s about making you feel it.
There is real music in his photography, his ability to use structure sometimes plays to this, but more so, his pictures reverberate. The nature of photography at its core is a still image, Gilles doesn’t try to pretend that pictures should seem like they are moving to be alive, instead he charges them with an energy that you feel.
Stripped back to bare physics, music is just vibration, but this vibration affects us, moves us, Gilles pictures vibrate.”
Chris Mann
Friend
Photographer
