Juliette AGNEL

Juliette Agnel, a photographic artist, focuses her practice on exploring the sensitive and the invisible within landscapes. After graduating with a master's degree in visual arts and ethno-aesthetics in 1997, and then from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she immersed herself in the study of chemical techniques and processes, she created her own digital camera obscura in 2011.

Guided by her intuition, her work is enriched by her numerous travels, she travels through Norway, Iceland, Korea, and even the Dogon country in search of aesthetic and sensory experiences. Discovering territories marked by the imprint of man and telluric forces, Agnel strives to convey, through unique framing and photographic processes, her sensations in the face of the explored landscapes.

In her series Nocturnes, initiated in 2016, Agnel's photographs are presented as temporal flaws: shots of starry skies are superimposed on daytime shots, capturing natural and archaeological landscapes. Her approach aims to capture the image perceived by the human eye while revealing the invisible, a common thread during her odyssey in 2019 from Khartoum to northern Sudan.

Traveling through the Sudanese desert for seven nights and seven days, Agnel witnessed the archaeological vestiges gradually revealing themselves under her lens. After a total immersion in photographing dunes and starry skies, she reached the Temple of Amun, then the Pyramid of Meroë, an ancient city of Nubia whose strange familiarity marked the climax of her journey. Beyond the dangers faced and the physical ordeal, this exploration gave Agnel a sense of transcendence. She transcribes this extraordinary experience in her nocturnal prints entitled Taharqa et la nuit, devoid of human presence, capturing the essence of a journey that is both interior and exterior.

Today represented by the Clémentine de la Ferronnière gallery, her series was exhibited at the Van Gogh Foundation in Arles during the exhibition “Van Gogh and the Stars”.