Photography and sciences, a dialogue to engage! 

We are convinced that sciences and arts have a vocation to meet in an intimate and creative dialogue that gives us something to see, to think about and to engage with. For Pythagoras, science and mathematisation are not an end in themselves, but a way of revealing a mystery and an emotion.  It is this same emotion that photography arouses, which has become a major art form that, more than ever, questions the world around us, brings men and women together, and links our societies. Bringing “Photography & Science” together is to participate in this necessary dialogue between several actors of the same society, willing to question together the place of the Human being in his environment and his role within contemporary connected, constantly changing and interdependent societies.

“The few discussions I’ve had with artists have helped me to get a perspective on what I do. We scientists are very attached to reality. We are explorers, not really dreamers. With them, I found this part of the dream. These are the words of Sylvestre Maurice, astrophysicist, astronomer and planetologist, specialist in the exploration of the solar system and sponsor of the 2019 edition of the Résidence 1+2. It shows the touching curiosity of an internationally renowned scientist for modes of artistic expression with an unsuspected evocative force.

It is true that, at first glance, photography and science are quite different : they have neither the same object, nor the same methods and purposes. If the former summons the sensitive and the imaginary, the latter is based on reason and reality. And yet, on closer inspection, they both question the world by making the invisible visible, pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, giving us a different way of seeing. If photography tells the story of the world’s twists and turns, the sciences help us to understand them better. Since its creation at the end of 2015, the Résidence 1+2 in Toulouse has had the ambition to bring together people who, at first sight, had no chance to talk to each other.

This third “Photography & Sciences” prize, 2023 edition, aims to be fully in line with this shared dynamic around a professional photographer of the french scene (french creators or artists working and/or living in France, whatever their nationality) : to create, in a collaborative and participative spirit, the right conditions for the creation of sensitive content, with photographer and scientists sharing thoughts and resources, composing new knowledges in a sort of factory of possibilities. 

At a time when the boundaries between all disciplines are crumbling, bringing artists and scientists together in the same project is an invitation to join forces, to stimulate new cross-disciplinary approaches, to renew creative forms in order to help us, together, to better understand and act in the face of the challenges of the contemporary world.