Gomma Photography Grant 2025
The bear and the little bride
Photographer
Jean-Claude Taki
The bear and the little bride
14 Feb, 2026
In the year preceding the war that led to the collapse of Yugoslavia, I spent several weeks living among a Roma community while preparing a film with them. Some were still bear handlers. Their circumstances were already deeply precarious—marked by poverty and violence, yet also by warmth and moments of shared joy that shaped our days together.With a 24x36 Pentax K1000, I photographed our time in black and white, capturing fragments of daily life as we experienced them. Many years later, I rediscovered the negatives in my cellar, with the intention of developing them into a photographic series. Having taken no particular measures to preserve them, I found that time had damaged the film.Rather than diminishing the images, this fragility felt profoundly resonant. The physical deterioration of the negatives echoes the vulnerability of the lives portrayed and the historical rupture that followed. The threat of time—visible in scratches, stains, and fading—becomes part of the narrative.The photographs are printed in a format of 18 × 24 cm on Japanese paper.
About the photographer
Jean-Claude Taki
Musician and filmmaker Jean-Claude Taki first gained recognition with a series of award-winning short films before directing his debut feature, Aurore / Number 9. Between 2005 and 2010, supported by the Forum des Images in Paris, he developed an experimental practice, exploring new forms of narration and visual language through filmmaking with mobile phones.His works have been presented both in cinemas and in major contemporary art institutions, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Several festivals have devoted retrospectives to his work, among them Open Cinema (St. Petersburg, 2008), the Forum des Images (Paris, 2010), and Côté Court (Pantin, 2012).Alongside his cinematic practice, Taki has published two novels with Éditions Intervalles—Lettres Kazakhes (2007) and Sotchi Inventaire (2013)—as well as an illustrated poetry book, Sotchi pour mémoire, created in collaboration with Guillaume Reynard. His feature film SOTCHI 255 (2012) received the Grand Jury Prize at Documenta Madrid and the Georges de Beauregard National Award at FIDMarseille.In 2013, he presented the exhibition Horizon // Tales in Kazakhstan, and from 2014 to 2016, he served as filmmaker-in-residence at Espace Khiasma in Les Lilas. In 2024, his feature film Les Poussières, starring Marc Barbé, Ania Svétovoya, and Cédric Kahn, was released in French cinemas, followed by Une Chronique Américaine in 2025.
