EN FR
Winner of the SAIF x LA KABINE Revelation Prize 2024
Le Bois de la dauphine, Elsa Beaumont
This photographic series is the second part of a project carried out within a community mutual aid association based in the Cévennes. Since its founding in 1985, this association has been acquiring abandoned places in order to create welcoming spaces for marginalized people. The purpose of this work is to make visible life trajectories that develop and express themselves on the margins of our society. I also see in it the experimentation of an alternative form of freedom invented by those rejected by the model in spaces left vacant because they are no longer profitable or exploitable.
In 2020, the community purchased an old abandoned and isolated hotel on Mont Aigoual, at 1560 meters altitude: the Bois de la Dauphine hotel. Built in 1907 and dedicated until World War I to a then-nascent mountain tourism, it was subsequently abandoned for thirty years. The French Resistance fighters found refuge there in April 1944, then the Germans set it on fire as they passed through. It was only rehabilitated in 1970 to welcome, during holidays, families of employees of the Perrier factory in Vergèze (Gard). Twenty years later, the hotel was again abandoned, becoming over time a squat that was once again set on fire.
Today, seven people live there, in 2,230 m² spread over three floors, consisting of about sixty rooms. This imposing concrete block, an architectural UFO, out of this world and out of time, is isolated on a mountainside battered by winds and heavy rains.
expression by filmmaker Chris Marker in the film Sans soleil
This project received support from the DRAC Occitanie.
Biography:
Elsa Beaumont explores a documentary and social approach to photography and builds an artistic work in the organic mixtures of light and matter. Her long-term projects unite in the image intimate, interior territories of people excluded or marginalized from society. Her photographs break down representations and go beyond prejudices; they engage a sensitive connection to the other, to the different, revealing all its complexity and light.
Graduated from the Montpellier School of Fine Arts and the National Superior School of Photography in Arles, she is the winner of the SAIF x La Kabine Revelation Prize, the Maison Blanche Prize, and received a special mention of the FOCALE Prize. She was a finalist of the Mentor Prize and the QPN Prize. Her photographs are regularly exhibited and screened at various festivals, galleries, and art centers: FOCALE gallery in Nyon (Switzerland), Contemporary Art Institute in Le Vigan, Les Boutographies in Montpellier, Itinéraires des photographes voyageurs in Bordeaux, QPN festival in Nantes, 9PH festival in Lyon, Les Photographiques in Le Mans, Les nuits photographiques de Pierrevert, Fisheye gallery at the Paris Photo Fair. Her photographic projects are supported by the DRAC Occitanie, the Occitanie region, and the Gard department.
Reporters sans frontières
From the Amazon to Ukraine, from Palestine to the migration routes out of Afghanistan, Russia, or Mexico, they are on the front lines. To document suffering, yes—but also resistance and hope. Founded in 1985, Reporters Without Borders works to defend freedom, independence, and pluralism in journalism worldwide. Through daily monitoring of abuses against those who inform us, exclusive investigations, firsthand accounts, and documentaries, RSF sheds light every day on the state of press freedom and the right to information around the globe. By offering assistance and protection to journalists in danger, denouncing violence and censorship, and fighting against impunity and disinformation, RSF stands by one core belief: without a free press, our right to information is violated, and our ability to make free choices is compromised. With Photographing the World of Tomorrow, we celebrate that very free journalism.
tes en danger, en dénonçant les violences et la censure, en luttant contre l’impunité et la désinformation, RSF affirme une conviction : sans journalisme libre, c’est notre droit à l’information qui est bafoué, notre capacité à décider librement qui est entravée. Avec “Photographier le monde de demain”, c’est ce journalisme libre que nous célébrons.
La Kabine intime
La Kabine intime opens up a space for creation, where delicate gestures, personal narratives, and sensitive experimentation intertwine. Here, the body becomes a site of investigation, colors express singular perceptions, and images map shifting territories—between memory, ritual, and transformation. This is a space to explore the living world, its uprisings and its wounds, and to question the visible and invisible threads that bind us to one another. In this evolving exhibition of fragments, creation is no longer a final product but an exchange, a passage, an attempt to inhabit the world differently.
For its second OFF edition, La Kabine opens its backstage through the “Secret Kabine”, revealing the creative processes in progress. The 2025 residents — Eveline Soum, Frédéric D. Oberland, Pepe Atocha, and Adrien Julliard — share their ongoing research, trials, and emerging gestures. Juliette Larochette offers a sensory journey between images and sounds, while Florent Basiletti explores visual literacy and image-based education with students from the École du Domaine du Possible. An intimate exhibition where creation becomes a space of exchange and experimentation.
Pepe Atocha unveils the energy of the living through experimental photography. Navigating between intuition, shadow, and ritual, he questions our connection to time, nature, and photographic aesthetics.
Soum Eveline, a Burkinabe photographer, explores themes of memory, the body, and identity. Since 2021, her work has been exhibited across Africa and Europe, reflecting a practice that is both personal and politically engaged.
Adrien Julliard, artist and mediator, works across photography, drawing, and arts education. His approach blends site-specific actions with participatory protocols, probing the emotional dimension of creative gestures.
Frédéric D. Oberland, visual artist and multi-instrumentalist composer (Oiseaux-Tempête, FOUDRE!), works at the crossroads of image and sound, favoring a synesthetic approach.