an exhibition on glaciers in the corridors of Matabiau station
Photos of glaciers adorn the corridors of the Toulouse Matabiau train station. the CNRSthe SNCF and the Residence 1+2 come together for the duration of an exhibition. “ASTER, bad news on the front of the glaciers” settles in the corridors of the Toulouse station until December 16th. She tells the glacier life by mixing photographs and science.
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Meeting between a photographer and a glaciologist
This exhibition reveals the images of terrestrial glaciers along the station walls. It is possible thanks to the meeting between Grégoire Eloy, photographer, and Étienne Berthier, glaciologist and research director CNRS at the Laboratory for Studies in Geophysics and Spatial Oceanography.
During the 2021 edition of Residence 1+2, the two protagonists of the exhibition have chosen to highlight “the contemporary challenges of research adapted in CNRS laboratories”. Thus, the melting of glaciers is highlighted through revisited satellite images that arouse the interest of many researchers such as Étienne Berthier. Grégoire Eloy, documentary photographer for nearly 20 years, has decided to hold his residency in 2021 around the melting of the glaciers.
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Images that speak for themselves
The photographer then worked on this sad climatic phenomenon that is the melting of glaciers. The corridors of the Toulouse Matabiau station are then dressed in a tailor-made scenography of the work of Gregoire Eloy and Etienne Berthier. The photographer then explains:
The melting of glaciers is inevitable, it is a fact. In the Pyrenees, even more than elsewhere, nothing can slow down or reverse the trend. The glaciers will disappear. What is less lost is the power of fascination that glaciers unfold over us. In front of them, we feel a strange feeling, a mixture of dread, wonder and familiarity. They seem to tell us something about ourselves, about our origins, like a distorting mirror”.
He adds: “The glaciologists accompany their decline until the moment when they will end up removing the beacons, the instruments, and will turn to other massifs, higher, probably more protected. […] I wanted to pay homage to the soon-to-be-disappeared glacier by adopting the glaciologist’s approach”.
To discover the free exhibition, go to the corridor between the forecourt and the entrance to the metro line A of the Toulouse Matabiau train station until December 16, 2022.
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