Late Bloomer: Gilbert Garcin Exhibition

At age 65, Gilbert Garcin was near retiring as the manager of a lamp-manufacturing plant in Marseilles, France. After taking a workshop at the 1997 French festival Les Rencontres d’Arles, he did give up his job. But only to embark on a whole new career: surrealist photographer.
 
Now 83, the Frenchman is having his second stateside show: “Damion Berger/Gilbert Garcin” at Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 7 to March 2. The show’s 12 new and old black-and-white works possess a magical quality. At the center of each fairytalelike image is Garcin himself, or “Mister G” as some have called the tall, trench coat–clad figure standing beneath a towering dandelion, sitting inside a sea urchin shell, or dangling from puppet strings.
 
Surprisingly, Garcin does not use Photoshop; instead, the out-of-scale images are made using simple cut and paste. Garcin first poses for a self-portrait, cuts out the resulting image, places it in a setting handmade from such materials as cardboard and string, and photographs it again.

Gilbert Garcin’s gelatin silver print Lorsque le Vent Viendra (When the Wind Will Come) comes to Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, on February 7.