Eyes Wild Open
Her trembling, blurry images are a terrain that gives substance to dreams and fiction. Her powerful and fragile portraits of women and children can be read as infinite landscapes. Although, she takes her photographs within a close perimeter of the Basque Country, where she was born, or her native Portugal, a sense of wonder and magic often surfaces. As if her mystically landscapes, her strange and ghostly characters/apparitions, her mysterious animals, had all escaped from a story book or folk tale. Her photography often, without ever seeming passé or too heavy with references, reflects influences from painting as well as Victorian photography and literature.
Her photographs are like unveilings – though without any hint of indecency – Gabrielle Duplantier is one of those photographers who drill through to what hides beneath the surface, behind appearances, as if she could see beyond the skin of beings and objects, through cracks, fissures and secrets.
– Caroline Benichou 2018