Juliette Agnel
Born in 1973, Juliette Agnel studied fine arts and ethno-aesthetics at the University of Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the 1990s, took courses with Africanist Jean-Louis Paudrat and developed a passion for Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris, as well as for Victor Segalen's expeditions to China, which sparked her love for travel. A meeting with filmmaker and ethnologist Jean Rouch led her to explore the roads of Africa for over ten years. Juliette Agnel is both an explorer of photographic material and the vastness of nature. Two photographic series, “Laps,” based on the use of Super 8 film, and “Les Éblouis,” for which she created a digital camera obscura to produce a set of portraits, have led her to perceive blur and randomness as potential translations of human memory.
One night in 2016, in Spain, the sensation of being immersed in the starry sky of the Bardenas desert reactivated a foundational experience she had lived in the plateaus of Dogon country a few years earlier: the unbreakable bond between man and nature. This resulted in the series “Nocturnes,” created in two parts—at night, observing and photographing the stars, and during the day, capturing the desert landscape—exhibited in light boxes, notably during the Rencontres d'Arles and FIAC in 2017. The work she produced became the starting point for other series such as “La lune noire” and “La grande montagne.”
Subsequently, from the ruins of Sudanese necropolises to the Arrée Mountains and Greenland, the traveling photographer captures the relationship between humans and the geological or botanical power of landscapes. Her latest series, “La main de l'enfant,” focused on the prehistoric caves of Arcy-sur-Cure, was exhibited at the Rencontres d'Arles in the summer of 2023. For Juliette Agnel, art is about this relationship between the visible and the invisible, an absolute that transcends us and prompts us to question the foundations of our humanity. For her, it is about relentlessly pursuing the same quest by observing the forces that surround us but that we cannot see: “to grasp what unites us profoundly, reminding us that the small body of Man is a meaningful fragment of the cosmos.”
EXHIBITIONS
2024 La Main de l’Enfant, Hors Cadre, Auxerre
2024 Indicibles, Centre d’art et photographie de Lectoure, L’été photographique de Lectoure
2024 Van Gogh et les étoiles, Fondation Van Gogh, Arles (exposition collective)
2024 Pierre, feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours
2024 French Photography Today : A New Vision of Reality, Sungkok Art Museum, Séoul (exposition collective)
2024 Prix Niépce 2023, Jeu de Paume de Tours
2023 Prix Niépce 2023, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)
2023 Aux étoiles le poids de la terre et les étoiles pures,Chilgok Festival, Corée
2023 Chambre à brouillard, L’Ahah #Griset, Paris
2023 Histoires de pierres, d’après Roger Caillois, Jean de Loisy, et Sam Stourdze,Villa Medicis, Rome
2023 Nous, Laminaires. 2013-23023..., Fondation Clément, Martinique
2023 La main de l'enfant, Les Rencontres d’Arles
2022 Les Nuits, centre d’art Campredon, l’Île-sur-la-Sorgue
2022 Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris
2022 Pharaon des deux terres, l’épopée africaine des Rois de Napata, Musée du Louvre, Paris (exposition collective)
2021 Ce qui nous lie, Centre d’art Méandres, Huelgoat
2021 Le voyage à Carthage, Terre de parole, année Flaubert 21, Duclair
2021 Au fil du Nil, sur les traces de Ducamp et Flaubert, année Flaubert 21, Abbaye de Jumiège
2021 Aux étoiles le poids de la terre, Galerie Le Carré d’art, Chartres de Bretagnes
2021 Thawra ! Révolution ! Soudan, histoire d’un soulèvement, commissariat de l’exposition, Les Rencontres d’Arles, église les Trinitaires
2020 La Mémoire des roches, L’Imagerie de Lannion
2020 Une certaine scène française, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris
2019 Taharqa et la nuit, Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire et Institut français de Khartoum, Soudan
2018 Les Portes de glace et Nuits étoilées, Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire
2017 Les Nocturnes, Nouveau Prix Découverte, Les Rencontres d’Arles
2017 Les Éblouis, Maison de Chateaubriand, Week-end Intense du Mois de la Photo
2015 Obscura, Espace Saint-Cyprien, Toulouse
2015 Partie de campagne, Saint-Briac, Galerie Françoise Paviot
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Un autre monde, Juliette Agnel, Yannick Haenel, Jacques Aumont, éditions Maison CF, Paris, 2023
Silex, Léa Bismuth, éditions Maison CF, Paris, 2022
Aux étoiles le poids de la terre, éditions Contrejour, 2021
L’institut de la paléontologie humaine, éditions du Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Paris, 2021
L’invisible, éditions Isabelle Sauvage, 2020
Taharqa et la nuit, Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2019
50 ans de photographie française de 1970 à nos jours, Michel Poivert, éditions Textuel, Paris, 2019
La besogne des images, collectif, éditions Filigranes, Paris, 2019
Versailles Chantier, Juliette Agnel, Christiane Veschambre, éditions Isabelle Sauvage, 2014
D’un Espace l’Autre, ancien Collège des Jésuites, 2011
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Porte I, 2018
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Porte III, 2018
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Porte IV, 2018
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La Grande Montagne #4, 2018
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Taharqa et la nuit #1, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #3, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #4, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #6, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #13, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #14, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #16, 2019
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Taharqa et la nuit #19, 2019
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Fougères #006A, 2019
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Fougères #006B, 2019
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Fougères #009A, 2019
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Fougères #019B, 2019
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Fougères #022A, 2019
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Fougères #022B, 2019
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Geode de Pulpi, 2021
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Menhir de D'mina #1, 2022
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Silex #01, 2022
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Géode de Pulpi II, 2022
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La main de l’enfant #01, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #05 , 2023
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La main de l’enfant #06, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #12, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #13, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #14 , 2023
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La main de l’enfant #17, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #23, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #27 , 2023
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La main de l’enfant #28, 2023
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La main de l’enfant #32 , 2023
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La main de l’enfant #37 , 2023
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Grotte de glace I, 2024
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Grotte de glace II, 2024
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Grotte de glace III, 2024
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© Aurore Valade / Les Rencontres d’Arles 2023
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© Aurore Valade / Les Rencontres d’Arles 2023
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© Aurore Valade / Les Rencontres d’Arles 2023
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© Aurore Valade / Les Rencontres d’Arles 2023
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© Aurore Valade / Les Rencontres d’Arles 2023
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Monolithes, Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris, 2022
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Focus, Manifesta, Lyon, 2023
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Focus, Manifesta, Lyon, 2023
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Focus, Manifesta, Lyon, 2023
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French Photography Today : A New Vision of Reality, Sungkok Art Museum, Séoul, 2024
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French Photography Today : A New Vision of Reality, Sungkok Art Museum, Séoul, 2024
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French Photography Today : A New Vision of Reality, Sungkok Art Museum, Séoul, 2024
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Pierre, Feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours, 2024
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Pierre, Feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours, 2024
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Pierre, Feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours, 2024
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Pierre, Feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours, 2024
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Pierre, Feuille, silex, Jeu de Paume, Tours, 2024
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Van Gogh et les étoiles, Fondation Van Gogh, Arles, 2024
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Van Gogh et les étoiles, Fondation Van Gogh, Arles, 2024
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Van Gogh et les étoiles, Fondation Van Gogh, Arles, 2024
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Monolithes
Juliette Agnel 6 Oct 2022 - 28 Jan 2023With her first exhibition at the gallery, Juliette Agnel invites us to explore fabulous spaces open to the unknown. The photographic adventure is existential, on the lookout for extreme landscapes,...Read more -
Une certaine scène française
Juliette Agnel, Marco Barbon, Adrien Boyer, Flore and Guillaume Zuili 28 Nov 2020 - 30 Jan 2021What links the photographs of Juliette Agnel, Marco Barbon, Adrien Boyer, FLORE and Guillaume Zuili? A taste for documentary? A curiosity for history? An interest in the relationship between text...Read more
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Paris Photo
6 - 10 Nov 2024For this year's return to the Grand Palais, the gallery presents a booth centered on the notion of transmission through photographic creation. Considering it at...Read more -
Art Paris
Juliette Agnel, FLORE, Mikiya Takimoto, Jesse Willems 3 - 7 Apr 2024List of works on displayRead more -
Paris Photo
Juliette Agnel, James Barnor, FLORE, Paul Graham, Thomas Klotz, Martin Parr, Guillaume Zuili 8 - 12 Nov 2023The artists selected by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière for Paris Photo 2023 question the reciprocal relations between humans and the territory they inhabit. This...Read more -
Manifesta
22 May - 24 Jul 2023Steeped in history, this former silk trading workshop located at 6 rue de Pizay in Lyon (France) is today transformed into a cultural center by...Read more -
Paris Photo 2022
10 - 12 Nov 2022The stand consists of a collection of important works, most of which have never been shown before. A previously unseen print by James Barnor, whose...Read more