Penser le Présent with Alice Pallot and Clara Bouveresse

Narrating the invisible and the living

Alice Pallot and Clara Bouveresse examine the medium of photography, the links between art and science, new representations of the living, the materiality of the non-visible, experimental degradation processes, representations of the near future, and the need to rethink our interactions with the environment in a damaged world.

Hosted by Estelle Zhong Mengual as part of the “Inhabiting the landscape: artistic practices of hospitality for the living” chair.

Alice Pallot is a photographic artist who uses the medium of images to question the impact of human activities on the environment. Imbued with a science-fictional imaginary, her photographs and videos reveal issues that have remained invisible.

A graduate of ENSAV La Cambre, Alice Pallot took part in the 1+2 photography and science residency in 2022. In 2023 and 2024, she will show Algues maudites, a sea of tears in 25 exhibitions across Europe, including Science/Fiction. Une Non Histoire des Plantes in Paris, currently at the MEP. In parallel, she publishes the books Land (2016), Himero (2020), Suillus (2021, reed. 2022), Algues maudites, a sea of tears (Area books, 2023), Red Bloom (The Eyes Publishing, 2024) and co-founds the De Anima collective. In April 2024, Alice Pallot wins the RJPI at Villa Perochon and the Nouvelles écritures de la photographie environnementale prize with La Gacilly and Leica. In November 2024, the three parts of Algues maudites are the subject of an exhibition at the Leica gallery in Paris in collaboration with ESA, and of a solo show with Hangar gallery at Paris Photo in the emerging sector.

Clara Bouveresse is a lecturer in English studies at the University of Evry/Paris Saclay. Based on her thesis, she published Histoire de l'agence Magnum. L'art d'être photographe (Flammarion, 2017); in the Photo Poche collection, the three volumes devoted to women photographers (Actes Sud, Thames&Hudson, 2020) and Photographies au saut du lit (2023); and in 2024, with Laure Adler, Les femmes photographes sont dangereuses (Flammarion).