With his series “Un Balcon Sur l’Infini” (A Balcony on Infinity), exhibited at the Planches Contact Festival in Deauville (France), Adrien Boyer continues his dialogue with the maritime landscape. After exploring the coasts of Var and Finistère, he turns his gaze this time to Normandy, in a continuity that is both geographical and interior. Rather than representing a specific place, he captures forms, textures, and breaths of light in which a silent emotion can be felt.
A photographer of sensitivity, Adrien Boyer walks the shoreline as one explores a mental territory. The sea becomes a mirror, the sky a passage. Between ebb and flow, he seizes those suspended moments when the matter of the world seems to merge with that of thought. Here, the horizon is no longer a boundary; it is an opening — an invitation to contemplation, to losing one’s bearings.
Through pared-down compositions and subtle color harmonies, he transforms the ordinary into a threshold toward infinity. His photography, precise yet instinctive, offers an almost meditative experience of the real — an approach he discusses with Blind in the following interview.
Your series exhibited at Planches Contact extends an exploration that began in several French regions. What drew you to Normandy?
In continuity with my project titled “At the Horizon of the World,” initiated two years ago in the Mediterranean and developed this summer in Finistère, I wanted to pursue this visual exploration of the imaginaries linked to the sea and coastal towns. To me, Normandy carries a singular, distant relationship — perhaps because of its deep, expansive beaches — that one could describe as philosophical or metaphysical, between humankind and the sea. Everywhere else I’ve traveled, the sea seems to call for action, to set sail. But here, it provokes the opposite reaction: one of stillness, or rather of reflection. Through my wanderings along the coast — Honfleur, Cabourg, Dives, Houlgate, Franceville — I tried to paint the portrait of this strange city, as if suspended at the edge of our inner abyss, which is the Norman seaside town.
You were invited to Deauville for an artist residency. Can you tell us how it unfolded?
It was an extraordinary human and artistic experience! I spent three weeks in Normandy over three separate stays between March and July. There were about fifteen of us artists in residence. We could come during four periods of two weeks each, which allowed us to reconnect and share a kind of communal life while each pursuing our own artistic projects at our own rhythm. We all stayed at Villa Namouna, a beautiful Norman-style house facing the beach, made available to artists by the city of Deauville. With the sea stretching out before me, I couldn’t have dreamed of a more inspiring setting for my project. We also received logistical support from the cultural center Les Franciscaines. But beyond the material conditions that allowed us to realize ambitious projects in Normandy, the real value of this residency lay in the encounters and the bonds we formed. I remember long discussions with the great Arno Minkkinen, who commented on my images in detail, or an exchange about the political meaning of body photography with the Chinese artist Lin Zhipeng, and passionate debates about existential questions with the young photographer Jérémy Appert. These were precious, intense moments — experiences that stay with you for life.
The title “A Balcony on Infinity” evokes both a place of contemplation and a mental opening. How did it come about? You often speak of the sea as a “territory of the soul.” What does it reveal to you in this sustained relationship with the horizon?
As the philosopher François Jullien describes in his book L’Inoui, the proximity of the sea sometimes allows us to see anew — to be overwhelmed by the world and rediscover it outside the structured categories of thought, beyond words. I suspect the sea, in Normandy more than elsewhere, of drawing us toward another abyss — our own — of leading us to explore the farthest reaches of our thoughts, to undertake that great journey which allows us to cross to the other side of our inner horizon. “I shall not look at the gold of evening falling, nor at the sails descending toward Harfleur.” Yet Victor Hugo was looking; but what he saw reflected him beyond himself, into the infinity of his emotions. That is why, I believe, so many artists have found themselves projected inward in contact with this sea so omnipresent it becomes invisible, seized by unfathomable “reflections.” The sea works upon the mind as much as upon the gaze.
Your images seem to abolish all scale, all geographic reference. Are you seeking to create an inner rather than a physical space?
You’ll notice that one almost never sees the sea in my photographs — or only barely — but I think one can feel its presence. I seek to create an inner landscape, a space where the soul can move, can unfold according to its moods, its emotions, its memories, its aspirations. My photography is not descriptive; it is introspective — and through that, emancipatory. Because it’s when we lose ourselves that we discover ourselves. Each photograph aims to recreate a new reality every time it is viewed, depending on who we are in that moment. Everything in our world is designed to keep us at the surface of ourselves, to format our relationship with reality. But the sea contains within it the idea that there is something beneath the surface — that reality does not end at what we see.
In your compositions, the world no longer appears in three dimensions — it seems flattened into one. Do you see the Earth as flat?
Of course! (laughs). I think this impression comes from the fact that, for me, every atom of reality matters as much as any other. In my photographs, I try to make that vision of the world perceptible. I believe that nothing is more important than anything else, but that everything is essential. That’s why in my images there isn’t really a “subject” as such — because if nothing is important but the image exists nonetheless, then everything becomes necessary. Every blade of grass, every shade of sand, every hue begins to vibrate, to expand, contributing its keystone to the whole.
How much room do you give to chance, to instinct, in your way of photographing?
My photographs are paradoxically very constructed and yet perfectly instinctive. It’s when I let go of control over my gaze that it begins to perceive according to who I truly am. Chance owes nothing to chance; it’s the art of being present — to the world and to oneself — that allows one to see what is really happening. For me, the decisive moment depends less on what I’m looking at than on how I’m looking — on my state of mind.
How do you work with color? It seems here less realistic than spiritual, almost meditative.
Color plays an essential role in my process. It allows me to forget what I am looking at and move to another level of perception, which feels superior, perhaps more meditative, but above all more truthful. Color frees my vision from material contingency — and I would even say it frees matter itself from what our minds reduce it to: objects, functions, names, arbitrary classifications of language and thought. Rationally, one might think colors belong to things, but in a way, things belong to colors. We find here the paradox revealed by quantum physics: every particle of matter can also be defined as a wavelength.
The exhibition text quotes Paul Valéry: “Where is the man who has not explored in spirit the abyssal nature?” How does this verse illuminate your relationship to photography?
I came across this poetic essay, Regards sur la mer, by chance this summer — beautifully reissued by Fata Morgana. For me, that line perfectly captures the inner shift I try to explore through my images. The sea is first and foremost an experience of thought. It stirs the imagination, pushing us to envision what lies behind, beneath, and above. The sea overwhelms us. It teaches us that we understand nothing, yet that we are understood by the universe. Only the sea — like the night sky or certain rare, inconceivable spectacles — has the power to suddenly overturn the egocentric, interpretive tendency of humankind, to open the doors of consciousness, to bring us out of ourselves, and thus to allow us to truly know who we are.
What does this exhibition represent for you and your career?
This exhibition marks a significant milestone in my path. Fifteen years since my beginnings, it represents a recognition of my work and my artistic approach — one that combines reflection and sensation, questioning the ability of the gaze to deconstruct meaning in order to rebuild it elsewhere. I am grateful to the Photo4Food Foundation jury and the Planches Contact Festival for their trust, and I am delighted to appear in this year’s program alongside major artists from the French and international contemporary photography scene. This meaningful experience will surely bear beautiful fruit for all of us.
“A Balcony on Infinity,” by Adrien Boyer, is on view at the Planches Contact Festival in Deauville, France through January 4, 2026.
