The Giver offers its audience an encounter with photography in its most immediate form, inscribed only (and slowly) by light, time and chemistry. The body of work celebrates the medium’s capacity to refer exclusively to itself, prioritising its own object over those accumulated by the world around. The series’ title borrows from a 1993 novel of the same name by American writer Lois Lowry. In her pages, Lowry conjures a setting entirely devoid of emotional investment, described at lengths to be black and white. Colour, she introduces gradually to the story, after one character finds himself ordained with the responsibility to bear the sombre memories of his loved ones. Like Lowry beforehand, Gageler foregrounds the generosity of this premise, presenting dazzling photographic images that are themselves born out of the susceptibility of their basic units to exposure and damage. The artist carefully orchestrates this dynamic and maps its artistic and bodily resonances.

-Benjamin Clay