Is the artist the actor or the operator of these images? The ambiguity remains; however, these bodies, subjected to the ritual of creation, inevitably evoke the complex construction of Réunionnais identity.
— Dominique Abensour
Thierry Fontaine is a French photographer born in 1969 in La Réunion. He is the author of photographs and sound installations, developing an original body of work inspired by human and social movements and displacement.
Originally from the island of La Réunion, Thierry Fontaine creates his photographic works by observing the shifting patterns of social models in relation to the places he inhabits. These movements generate encounters and new forms of contact. The resulting crossings intertwine and produce processes of métissage. Such interactions alter established models and raise new questions.
These improbable and often antagonistic encounters are made possible through the artist’s staging of carefully constructed situations involving model figures, prepared scenes, sculptures, and specially fabricated objects, all precisely arranged within a chosen context. He stages these setups and photographs them.
Since the late 1990s, Thierry Fontaine has developed a sustained artistic trajectory, exhibiting regularly at the FRAC (Fonds régional d’art contemporain), Saint-Paul, La Réunion in 1997; at the Musée Léon Dierx, Saint-Denis, La Réunion in 2000; at Micro-Onde, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Vélizy in 2011; at Galerie Louise Michel, Poitiers, Abbaye Sainte Croix and Abbaye Fontaine-le-Comte in 2012; at the École supérieure d’art de La Réunion, Le Port in 2013; at the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, Pontault-Combault in 2018; at the FRAC Réunion in 2017; and at the FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Marseille, also in 2017.