THE FAULT (2015) / A BLACK MATTER (2010)

THE FAULT and A BLACK MATTER are two chapters in a trilogy about the science of matter. In THE FAULT, ‘the fracture’, Grégoire Eloy photographed the Balmuccia fault line in northwest Italy. It is a fossilized scar that is over 250 million years old. An earthquake estimated to measure six on the Richter scale caused so much friction between the rocks that the stone melted into magma. This effect is still visible, as a thin black line of mostly glass. Eloy accompanied a group of geophysicists in mapping the fracture. Areas of one square metre were marked out and indexed on the surface. Eloy photographed them and turned them into a book, which once fully laid-out becomes an exact replica of the entire fracture, on a scale of 1:10.

A BLACK MATTER depicts research being carried out in astrophysical laboratories, including into dark matter. Scientists assume that dark matter is present in large quantities in space, in order to explain the perceived trajectories of distant stars, and other objects, without compromising the theories of gravity and relativity. Eloy portrays the researchers, laboratories and instruments, and the environment in which they carry out their work.