Gilles Mora is a French photography historian and critic specialising in 20th century American photography, and photographer. He has edited books on Walker Evans, Edward Weston, W. Eugene Smith, Aaron Siskind and William Gedney, as well as published a book of his own photographs, Antebellum. Mora won the Prix Nadar in 2007 for the book La Photographie Américaine: 1958–1981: the Last Photographic Heroes. Mora launched the FRAC regional contemporary art fund in Bordeaux and oversaw photography at Éditions du Seuil. He was artistic director of Rencontres d'Arles and is currently exhibition curator at a museum in Montpellier, where he lives. He was co-founder of the magazine Les Cahiers de la photographie and founder of the journal L'Œuvre Photographique; both of which he was editor-in-chief of.
Life and work
Mora was born in Vélines, Dordogne, southwestern France. He was for a time professor at the Ecole Normale D'agen in Agen, southwestern France. In 1981, with,, and, he created the magazine . He was its editor-in-chief until 1993. In 1985, Mora launched the Fonds régional d'art contemporain in Bordeaux. In 1991, he was appointed collection director, overseeing the photography program for the publisher Éditions du Seuil, where he remained until 2007. In 1993, Mora founded and was editor-in-chief of L'Œuvre Photographique, a journal of photography. He was artistic director of the Rencontres d'Arles photography festival from 1999 to 2001. Since 2010 he has been exhibition curator of the People's Pavilion photography museum in Montpellier, where he lives. Mora's book of his own photographs, Antebellum, was published in 2016. It contains photographs of the Southeastern United States made over more than twenty years—Mora and his wife left France in 1972 to teach French language in public schools in Louisiana. The work evokes the disappearing world of the Deep South, its title being a reference to Antebellum South.
Edward Weston: Forms of Passion, Passion of Forms. 1995..
W. Eugene Smith: Photographs 1934–1975. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Edited by Mora and John T. Hill.. With essays by Gabriel Bauret, Hill, Mora, Serge Tisseron, and Alan Trachtenberg.
*W. Eugene Smith: the Camera as Conscience. London: Thames & Hudson, 1998..
PhotoSpeak: a Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present. New York: Abbeville, 1997.
Walker Evans: the Hungry Eye. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004..
FSA: the American Vision. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006.
