Black is the origin. With the appearance of light different BLACKS have been revealed, multiple, sensitive, fragile but with what presence!
BLACKS that are born from the deprivation of light, BLACK reflections of non-reflections, a kind of anti-light that makes us discovering colors, lights and materials. They emphasize, reveal, make us aware of so close richnesses. Magical, simple, daily.
We took as starting point existing material or surfaces propitious to the imagination, one could be tempted to recognize skins, minerals, cellars, roads, mountains, water, sea, stars, coal, technical fabrics, bolts or dancer. But does one really need these eclectic identifications? These are just starting points, initializations, suspensions of time, like frozen frames masterfully highlighted by the BLACKS...
We often get close to abstraction, approaching the border between fantasy and realism within a curious, exciting and accomplice mood. By associating the imaginary and the real, dreams and origins do merge.
Because the light is our brush, we wanted to go on playing, dreaming, looking even further ... drilling holes for the light.

NOIRS

Black does not mean sad! It is beautiful because by some kind of self-sacrifice, it allows us to perceive, to observe and to discover the light and the colours, therefore the matter.
In our culture, the relationship between NOIRS and colour is not as binary as one could be tempted to think.

If the absolute black absorbs all the wavelengths, it would be characterized by an absence of colour but the reality is very different, much more surprising!
Very rarely pure, black is linked to colours.
It reveals micro-details, trends, influences, so that each point shining more or less makes us apprehend one or more isolated or dominant colours, because it leans on the material, accomplice of the light. As such, black is not unique, it is fundamentally multiple.
But this multiplicity remains mysterious: one speaks easily of "deep black" and curiously never of "light black": if it is deep, the black could not it also be revealing?
Such an incursion into the worlds of NOIRS is a fun quest, sometimes complicated but fascinating... To bring out the light and the colours out of the black, it is necessary to be attentive, curious, to stir the received ideas and to question oneself.
Before starting our actual work, it is essential for us to carry out studies, trials and error, it means to go back and ahead, it implies to never let go.
At the base of each image there is a reality, no matter what is its origin.
What matters is the attraction that the final image arouses, its power of seduction, to take us elsewhere, in a world that everyone can conceive according to one's own dreams and imaginations. We just want this exhibition to take visitors elsewhere, nicely and gently and let them enjoy the incredible and surprising richnesses of NOIRS…

26 prints 140 x 105 cm. Prints signed, limited edition (5 copies)

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.

It didn't take many years for Nicolas Claris to become one of the world's leading photographers, but since 2000, he has built on the strength of all these "lot of" achievements and continues to astonish us each year with his singular vision of the world around us, impeccably disruptive at times, joyously classic at others, and tenderly devoted, always.

Eclecticism is not an art in itself, but it gives Nicolas a freedom of tone, a creative force that enables him today to tackle any subject with that mix of skill and respect that makes us look at his work with a joyful pleasure, far from any seriousness, ready for any surprise.
This is the talent of Nicolas Claris, who has moved from being a photographer by necessity to becoming a contemporary artist who cannot be ignored".

Bruno Belmont

In 2008, Sinar entrusted him with an HY6 for a year of intensive testing under conditions that were out of the ordinary for such equipment. 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 in medium format, but with a 102-megapixel sensor for exceptional color and image quality).

Full biography

ROMAIN CLARIS

Claris Image Builder - Video Director

«If a wide angle shot is what we can all do - more or less, we who have taken too many pictures at every turn and confused wide angle with an overall view - 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, the drops of rain on a train window, a pier by the sea, the hand of a sculptor, a pebble becoming a jewel, the flexible foot of a dancer, the look of a Bangladeshi fisherman, jute fibre becoming a boat, all these things, women, men filmed by Romain Claris, move us because they allow us to see, starting with the detail, a wider, richer world, more complex than we thought, so that, freeing our eye with his, we may be able to see better yet...»

Jacques Dubuisson - Screenplay writer, Director.

Romain Claris has been creating short films since 2000, which have been selected and awarded at more than a hundred international film festivals.

Graduated of the Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français in Paris in 2005, he went on to establish the video department at the advertising and communication agency Claris Image Builder, being responsible for the production and direction of 500 films.
In 2020, he co-founded and became the director of the Bordeaux Shorts Biennale. The third edition of the Bordeaux Shorts Biennale is scheduled for October 2024.
He collaborates with photographer Nicolas Claris on several exhibitions of photographs and videos, including Bangladesh in 2013, Rouge in 2017, Noirs in 2018, Un peu de rouge, pourtant in 2020, and On the rocks in 2023.
Romain Claris has been involved in various cinema educational projects, including sessions at the Lycée de Pauillac in 2013, and at the Lycée Victor Louis de Talence in 2019 and 2022.
Currently in preparation for 2026 is the creative documentary Les comptes de la lune, offering an alternative history of the invention of numbers and calculation.

Full biography - Awards