In the revealing darkness of Michel Graniou: a dive into the very essence of photography

At the Charles Nègre Photography Museum, the exhibition “Camera Obscura” pays tribute to more than forty years of creation by Michel Graniou. With seventy analog prints on display, the photographer from Nice invites us to enter the mysterious world of the darkroom, this ancestral tool that was the first photographic device in history.

Upon entering the Charles Nègre Photography Museum, Graniou offers visitors an immersive experience: to symbolically pass through a camera diaphragm to enter the inside of a camera obscura. It is in this setting that the poetry of his work unfolds. The light passes through the aperture, impresses the photosensitive surface, and reveals the subject. We are struck by this writing with light, the very purpose of the exhibition and the etymology of the word photography.

Between naturalia, artificialia, and mirabilia: a contemporary cabinet of curiosities

Through these groups, Michel Graniou explores recurring motifs throughout his work: death, the passage of time, but also life and youth. In many photographs, the hourglass recalls the flow of time, the skull echoes classical vanities, while the flowers, present and delicate, embody youth, fragility, and rebirth. This symbolic triad, deeply rooted in art history, structures the interpretation of the exhibition and gives each image a meditative dimension.

His photographic practice, decidedly artisanal, relies on ancient processes: bichromated gum, palladium, cyanotype, or wet collodion. The intentional slowness of these techniques is part of his approach: contemplation, meditation, and attention to detail.

Symbols, vanities, and balance: an aesthetic of contemplation

In the halls, stone lions, wooden columns, ribboned flowers, and even a long narwhal tusk respond to each other in a play of echoes. These objects evoke life, death, and the ambivalence inherent in vanities, where beauty mingles with the ephemeral. The tension between what is born and what disappears permeates the entire exhibition.

Graniou also places great importance on symmetry, which he considers a fundamental structure of his visual language. It organizes space, stabilizes compositions, and lends his images an almost ceremonial dimension. For him, symmetry is not merely an effect: it’s a way of revealing the secret balance of things, their immobile aspect in a moving world.

A journey through time and art

Graniou stages a whole history of photography, from Nicéphore Niépce’s camera obscura to the most demanding analog practices. Born in Nice in 1955, trained very young in photography, the artist never entirely succumbed to the sirens of digital. He advocates for an image constructed slowly, in the rigor of the laboratory and the magic of chemical reactions.

His passion for natural sciences has a lasting influence on his subjects, and his years spent documenting the architectural heritage of the Alpes-Maritimes reinforce his meticulous approach. Since 1996, he has been represented by the Galerie Chave in Vence. The exhibition in Nice marks a dual anniversary: his seventieth birthday and also the fortieth anniversary of his first exhibition at the Mossa gallery.

A mystical art of light

“Such photographic art is akin to a mystical experience,” writes Jean-Paul Potron in the text accompanying the exhibition. Through the alchemy of silver-based paper, Graniou celebrates “the silver, gold, or platinum weddings between light and the photographer’s eye.” Each image thus appears as a living material, born from a silent dialogue between the visible and the invisible.

With “Camera Obscura,” Michel Graniou does not just show objects: he reveals what light brings forth. The exhibition, rich with symbolic significance, invites the visitor to slow down, observe, and rediscover the fragile beauty of the world.