Gil Rigoulet becomes in 1984 the first photographer to work with the newspaper Le Monde with which he collaborates for over 20 years. He achieves side by side with Henri Cartier-Bresson a supplement called "Portrait of a news paper; le Monde". In 1986, Robert Doisneau presents Gil’s pictures in a portfolio of Photo-Magazine and Christian Caujolle (Chief Picture Editor of the French newspaper Liberation) show his pictures for the exhibition
at the Deligny swimming pool next to Jospeh Koudelka, Marc Riboud, William Klein, Helmut Newton, Jean Loup Sieff, Jacques Henri Lartigue...
He collaborates, during his press career, with numerous national and international magazines such as Geo, Grands Reportages, Elle, Figaro magazine, The Sunday Times, La Republica, la Stampa, El Pais. He continues his work for the press until 2007.
“I was passionate about photos, making a living shooting pictures brought me a sense of balance. But the photos I took for a newspaper weren't necessarily the topics I was most interested in. So I took time off and travelled to fulfill my own calling. No obligations, no command, just to see the world around me. I wanted to immerse myself in this society and convey my feelings to understand what was frozen and what changed. I went into the details of situations, grasped what sometimes escapes us. We must love human nature to devote so much time and it takes time to understand these lives, these ways of transcending the ordinary, these absurd situations, but also this joy of living and this revolt. My pictures were the street.”
In the 80s, he chooses to focus on this personal photographic research too and 35 years later, he is still seeking those subjects. He kept those series private and only started to show them recently: Bodies & Water, On the Road and Intimacy.
"This last series shows the intimacy of the places where I lived, glasses, carafes, clothes and women. I made these polaroid images, but I did not fix the positives, I let them deteriorate over time; mimicry with memory that dilutes in time."