Nicolas Claris  ·  Romain Claris

NOIRS

Photographs by Nicolas Claris
Film by Romain Claris

Photo © Nicolas Claris — All rights reserved

scroll

NOIRS

Where BLACKS honor light and colors…
The NOIRS exhibition was presented:
From June 20 to September 9, 2018 at the art gallery of Relais & Châteaux Saint-James in Bouliac
From April 24 to 28, 2019 as part of the 10th International Multihull Show
From June 25 to July 15, 2021 by the gallery "La vitrine" in Bordeaux

Black is the origin. With the appearance of light, different BLACKS were revealed, multiple, sensitive, fragile but with such presence! BLACKS born from the deprivation of light, BLACKS reflections of non-reflections, a kind of anti-light that makes us discover colors, lights and textures. They emphasize, reveal, make us aware of riches so close. Magical, simple, everyday.

We took as a starting point material, spatial realities conducive to the imagination. One might be tempted to recognize skin, minerals, wine cellars, roads, mountains, water, sea, stars, coal, technical fabrics, bolts or dancers. But do we really need these eclectic identifications? These are only starting points, initializations, suspensions of time, like freeze frames masterfully illuminated by BLACKS

We often find ourselves close to abstraction, approaching the border between dreams and realism in a curious, exciting and complicit approach. By combining imagination and reality, reveries and origins merge.
Because light is our brush, we wanted to continue playing, dreaming, searching even further… To pierce holes for the light.

NOIRS
Black is not sad! It is beautiful because through its self-denial, it allows us to perceive, see and discover light and colors, and therefore matter.

In our culture, the relationship between blacks and colors is not as binary as one might think. If absolute black absorbs all wavelengths, it would be characterized by an absence of color, but the reality is quite different, much more surprising!

Rarely pure, black is inseparable from colors. It reveals micro-details, tendencies, influences, so that each more or less luminous point allows us to apprehend one or several isolated or dominant colors, because it leans against matter, complicit with light. In this respect, black is not unique, it is fundamentally multiple.

But this multiplicity remains mysterious: we readily speak of "deep black" and curiously never of "light black": if it is deep, is black not also a revealer?

Such an incursion into the worlds of BLACKS is an amusing, sometimes complicated but fascinating quest... To make light and colors emerge from black, we must be attentive, curious, challenge preconceived ideas and question ourselves.
Before beginning our actual work, it is essential for us to research and experiment, go backwards, go forwards and not let ourselves be defeated.

At the birth of each image there is a real basis, regardless of its origin, what matters is the attraction that the final image arouses, its power of seduction, to take us elsewhere, into a world that everyone can imagine according to their own dreams and imaginations. We simply hope that this exhibition transports visitors elsewhere, gently, and makes them enjoy the incredible and surprising riches of BLACKS

Video

The film

Edited, engraved on five signed USB keys.  Purchase one of five copies

Photographs

Signed prints, limited edition of 5 copies.   Purchase a print or a copy of the film →

The exhibition catalogue

The artists

Nicolas Claris

Nicolas Claris

Co-founder in 1993 of Claris Image Builder — Photographer

"It takes a lot of maritime knowledge to give each boat its most beautiful aspects. It takes a lot of technical knowledge to master the recent art of digital. It takes a lot of humility to serve your subjects, not use them. It takes a lot of energy to take on new challenges every year. It takes a lot of academicism to know how to break codes. It takes a lot of respect to avoid the easy way out. It takes a lot of love to make generous images. It takes a lot of open-mindedness to be a great artist." — Bruno Belmont, Product Development, Groupe Bénéteau

In 2008, Sinar entrusted him with an HY6 for a year of intensive testing under extraordinary conditions. Now addicted to medium format (large sensors), Nicolas Claris became one of Pentax's rare ambassadors from 2012 to 2021.

In 2022, he switched to even more technologically advanced Fujifilm equipment — still medium format, with a 102-megapixel sensor delivering exceptional colour and image quality.

Romain Claris

Romain Claris

Claris Image Builder — Video Director

"If a wide angle shot is what we can all do, detail is what is lacking for our image-drowned eye with which we look at the world. Then, only then — the fold of fabric in a sewing machine, the stroke of a brush on a white page, drops of rain on a train window, the hand of a sculptor, a pebble becoming a jewel, the flexible foot of a dancer… all these things filmed by Romain Claris move us because they allow us to see a wider, richer, more complex world than we thought." — Jacques Dubuisson, Screenwriter, Director

Romain Claris has been creating short films since 2000, selected and awarded at over a hundred international film festivals. Graduate of the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français in Paris, 2005.

In 2020, he co-founded the Bordeaux Shorts Biennale. In preparation for 2026: the documentary Les comptes de la lune, an alternative history of the invention of numbers and calculation.