23/05/2026 - 27/09/2026
dans la salle
Vernissage : 23 mai à 18h30
Marcel Bascoulard
Photography has often sought out its singular figures, its marginal artists in the vein of Douanier Rousseau, Facteur Cheval or Aloïse, to enrich its categories. Yet it is not in Marcel Bascoulard that it will find its ‘raw photography’. Far from being self- taught, this erudite man, poet and former art school student led an extraordinary life, marked by an artistic and personal quest.
Based in Bourges, a town in the Cher department that tolerated his eccentricities, Bascoulard illustrated its streets in Indian ink and with a brush, travelling through its neighbourhoods on a rickety tricycle. His life, marked by two tragedies – the murder of his father by his mother when he was under twenty, and his own assassination in 1978 – remains an enigma. Why did this man, who traded his works for food without seeking to exhibit them, turn to photography and self- portraiture? Why did he wear such eccentric outfits – skirts, pinafores, hats – which he made or put together himself, and which seem to be at the heart of his photographs? Was he an improvised fashion designer, creating a fashion catalogue in which he was both the model and the director?
For thirty years, Marcel Bascoulard explored his own image through a rigorous process. His self-portraits show him leaning against foliage, in front of crumbling walls or in backyards. At times, he takes his place in a bourgeois living room, dressed like a village woman in her Sunday best, a satchel slung over his arm. He always seems to be seeking to capture an essence of himself, a silent dialogue with his own reflection. Whilst one might be tempted to associate his work with that of Cindy Sherman or Claude Cahun, the comparisons soon end. Unlike Sherman, who hides behind masks, Bascoulard does not seek to disappear. And, unlike Cahun, he does not seem to question notions of gender or identity. Far from being a narcissistic quest, his self-portraits could instead be seen as an expression of a profound solitude, a choice he made in his early twenties. By photographing himself, he seems to want to exist fully, far from social conventions, in a space where he can be himself. Marcel Bascoulard’s photographic work, long overlooked in favour of his drawings, nearly disappeared. Stored in precarious conditions, it survived despite moves and the vagaries of life. Some negatives are lost forever, and prints were saved from the flames at the last minute. Yet this fragile and miraculously preserved body of work offers us a unique insight into an artist who, despite a tragic and marginalised life, could not sink into anonymity. Marcel Bascoulard invites us to reflect on identity, solitude and the way in which art can become a refuge, a space of freedom. Through his photographs, he continues to exist, offering us a glimpse of fragments of an extraordinary life.
A photographer, draughtsman and poet, a marginalised artist in the very image of his existence, Marcel Bascoulard (1913–1978) enjoyed dressing as a woman, producing numerous self-portraits in which he posed in outfits he had made himself. This ‘magnificent tramp’, an outsider in the world of photography, was murdered in Bourges in 1978.
With the support of the French Embassy in Belgium and the Institut français. As part of EXTRA, a program that supports French contemporary creation in Belgium.
Exhibition and catalogue in collaboration with
Photography Museum & Galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris, Brussels)
Curated by Camille Gouget and Xavier Canonne
