At Their image
The young photographic scene in Corsica
Bringing together the young photographic scene in Corsica means attempting to take the pulse of a territory through those who inhabit it, cross it, or see it differently. The title of this exhibition echoes Jérôme Ferrari’s novel À son image (2018), in which photography becomes both a trace, an enigma, and a fragile attempt to grasp life as it slips away.
The book’s title may be read as a reference to the divine — to the human shaped in the image of God — as much as to the photographer herself, a discreet and ambivalent protagonist whose gaze moves between foreign war zones and the political and nationalist tensions of Corsica at the end of the 20th century. By choosing the plural pronoun, At Their Imagesignals an opening: a multiplicity of subjectivities and perspectives through which to question the contemporary forms in which this territory continues to be seen, travelled, imagined, and lived.
The exhibition brings together artists whose approaches intersect and respond to one another around a central question: how can one represent an island like Corsica today? Between attachment and distance, social realities, contemporary transformations, and symbolic inheritances, this geography offers an inexhaustible field of exploration. Some were born here, live here, or return regularly; others have only stayed briefly. Their images form a kaleidoscope of perspectives — political, social, cultural, and above all, sensorial.
Photo credits Lea Eouzan-Pieri
Faced with the hyper-proliferation of digital imagery, contemporary photography asserts its necessity more than ever. It is not a simple recording: it is an experience. It relies on an economy of the visible — waiting, framing, experimenting — that resists the rapid scroll of images. In this sense, it remains an eminently democratic medium, open to all yet demanding in its capacity to render the density of the real.
Photography has long been thought of as an impersonal practice grounded in seriality. Yet it is precisely in the tension between repetition and expression that the singularity of the artists gathered here emerges. Their series assert styles, document inventions, and sometimes mark a departure from their environment. Through them, an emotional cartography of the island takes shape — both shared and fractured, luminous and opaque, familiar and unsettling.
In this subtle confrontation with places, bodies, and the stories that surround and shape us, photography regains its full power: to reveal what too often remains outside the frame.
Curated by Sébastien Arrighi and Fabien Danesi