Matthieu Gafsou lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. After university education (master's degree in history and film aesthetics, philosophy and literature), he studied photography at the School of Applied Arts in Vevey (2006-2008). Since 2006 he participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States. He received in the 2009 the famous "Prix de la fondation HSBC pour la photographie" and was selected in 2010 in the exhibition reGeneration2, organized by the Musée de l'Elysée (Switzerland), which presents photographers of tomorrow's coming from the whole world.
![]()
![]()
Traveling is a necessity. When away, I am overwhelmed by the inescapable loneliness of our condition. It is a sense of isolation that is hidden to us by our everyday lives – fortunately so. We grow accustomed to what our day-to-day existence throws our way, and it ceases to worry us: what is familiar needs not be perpetually questioned. Once what we are used to is no longer there, however, we develop a keen sense of things, an acuity we would never be able to achieve at home, for the structures of our ritualized existence would crumble and fall to pieces. Traveling is at once thrilling and scary. Discovery, exploration, the overwhelming of the senses. Loneliness, confinement within ourselves, the pointlessness of trying to find meaning. Along with the constant struggle – often in vain – not to succumb to the powerful appeal of what we find exotic.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
We tend to consider unspoiled spaces, wild expanses of nature, as places from which civilization – and its resulting alienations – are absent. This does not necessarily mean we cannot achieve a true bond with nature, through which we might connect with the world in a direct – though unspeakable – way. But I do feel the manner in which we often spontaneously oppose “pure” to “altered” nature (colonized, enslaved, degraded; mostly negative judgments) conceals another problem: our relationship to nature may very well be a cultural habit, a mass practice, in total contradiction with our usual discourse. Perhaps it is our very depiction of landscapes that manufacture them, that create the scenery in which the subject – a child of his own culture – might attain the fantasy Eden that is a true connection to nature.
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
![]()
Matthieu has published Surfaces, Actes Sud, in 2009 and is about to publish Alpes (19/80 editions, 2012) and Sacré (idPure, 2012).
View Matthieu's complete portfolio on his website
Traveling is a necessity. When away, I am overwhelmed by the inescapable loneliness of our condition. It is a sense of isolation that is hidden to us by our everyday lives – fortunately so. We grow accustomed to what our day-to-day existence throws our way, and it ceases to worry us: what is familiar needs not be perpetually questioned. Once what we are used to is no longer there, however, we develop a keen sense of things, an acuity we would never be able to achieve at home, for the structures of our ritualized existence would crumble and fall to pieces. Traveling is at once thrilling and scary. Discovery, exploration, the overwhelming of the senses. Loneliness, confinement within ourselves, the pointlessness of trying to find meaning. Along with the constant struggle – often in vain – not to succumb to the powerful appeal of what we find exotic.
We tend to consider unspoiled spaces, wild expanses of nature, as places from which civilization – and its resulting alienations – are absent. This does not necessarily mean we cannot achieve a true bond with nature, through which we might connect with the world in a direct – though unspeakable – way. But I do feel the manner in which we often spontaneously oppose “pure” to “altered” nature (colonized, enslaved, degraded; mostly negative judgments) conceals another problem: our relationship to nature may very well be a cultural habit, a mass practice, in total contradiction with our usual discourse. Perhaps it is our very depiction of landscapes that manufacture them, that create the scenery in which the subject – a child of his own culture – might attain the fantasy Eden that is a true connection to nature.
Matthieu has published Surfaces, Actes Sud, in 2009 and is about to publish Alpes (19/80 editions, 2012) and Sacré (idPure, 2012).
View Matthieu's complete portfolio on his website