Clément Verger
Photographer
July-August 2024
- Visual Arts
“It is these particular stretches of time between destinations that I hope to inhabit during this Atlantic-Pacific Artists Line residency, as I combine my photography with writing, drawing, and crafting within a folk art tradition.”
Clément Verger is a French artist-researcher whose work questions the apparent naturalness of the landscapes that surround us in the Anthropocene era, blending artistic production with scientific protocols in a research-driven approach. His projects are conceived as tools for analyzing the complex ramifications of human influence on the environment.
Launched in 2016, Circumnavigations is a long-term, three-part body of work that examines the impact of Captain James Cook’s voyages on the global landscape. Each of his three expeditions serves as the basis for case studies on the transportation and establishment of plant species across the world.
After studying visual communication at ENSAAMA Olivier de Serres, Clément Verger was awarded the prestigious Leonardo da Vinci international scholarship. In 2011, he earned a Master’s degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster in London. He was a laureate of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2018 and received the CNAP creation grant the same year. Clément Verger was a member of the French Academy in Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, for 2018-2019, and in 2020, he was awarded the CIPGP print prize from the Florence and Damien Bachelot collection. In 2021, he received further support from CNAP for his Circumnavigations project.
His work is held in numerous private collections, as well as in the collections of the Casa de Velázquez, FRAC Picardie, Frac Sud, BNF, Bachelot Collection, CIPGP, and CNAP. Since 2021, he has had the honor of being the first recipient of the doctoral contract through the project initiated by the Casa de Velázquez. His Circumnavigations project is being developed from 2021 to 2025 in collaboration with Université Paris-Saclay and the CHCSC cultural history laboratory.