A black matter

Grégoire Eloy

Grégoire Eloy’s photographs reproduced in A Black Matter were first published in instalments on F93's website, under the title of Ether. Our idea was to commission a photographer to produce a series of reportages on the world of science that were substantial enough to be shown on the site for several months.
For F93, which is a centre for scientific culture, it was never intended to be a visual explanation of the true nature of astrophysics for the edification of the public. On the contrary, the project developed with Grégoire Éloy was driven by the very different desire to shake up the way we see science and to use photography to reach out and “touch” it. Through Éloy’s camera, astrophysics is once again seen to be astoundingly plural, particularly through a mass of details that we had ceased to notice, accustomed as we are to classify, sort and pinpoint what science is all about.

Aware of the powerful forces of transformation in the work of some photographers, F93 wanted A Black Matter to be a reminder that “scientific and technical imagery”, as presented by research institutions and the specialist press, is not the only picture.

All photographs were taken in France in 2010, at the following places:  
Le laboratoire d’Astrophysique, Instrumentation-Modélisation, (AIM) de Paris-Saclay (CEA-Irfu/SAp, Université Paris-Diderot, CNRS-INSU), l’Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris (IAP-CNRS-UPMC), l’Observatoire de Paris, le Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane (LSM), le plateau de Saclay, et le tunnel routier de Fréjus.

Publication:
BOOK of 104 PAGES, 74 PHOTOGRAPHS, 24 X 30 CM, 1000 COPIES.
BILINGUAL FRENCH/ ENGLISH.
PUBLISHED by JOURNAL / GÖSTA FLEMMING, SWEDEN, IN 2012.
ISBN  978-91-980405-1-7

Photographies: PIERRE ANTOINE