At night, Guilhem Touya ventures alone into remote places—mountains, forests, deserts—illuminating the darkness with flashes and colored gels. There is no retouching or editing here: each image is constructed on site. Under this artificial light, nature is transformed. Trunks rise like ghostly silhouettes, rocks appear incandescent, and the air itself seems charged with a silent tension. These scenes, at once real and unreal, evoke postcards of an uncertain future, where civilization has given way to a world that has become wild again.
With Dystopie Chromatique (Chromatic Dystopia), the photographer combines the visual precision inherited from his years in advertising with a sensitivity nourished by science fiction and his childhood memories of contact with nature. Presented this summer at the Mesnographies festival in Les Mesnuls (France), the series questions the fragile balance between fascination and anxiety in the face of the living. It deliberately blurs our temporal reference points: is it a warning, a poetic vision, or both at once? In this tension between collapse and rebirth, Guilhem Touya invites us to look at the landscapes that surround us differently—as if we were seeing them for the first time, or perhaps for the last.
In the following interview, the artist sheds light on his work.
Why did you create this series of photographs?
I created this photographic series because it was a way for me to talk about global warming and echo anxiety with a poetic prism. It was also a play with the medium – since photography is very oriented towards the past and memories – I found it interesting to divert it to create postcards of the future.
Can you tell us more about the future they fit into?
These images speak of an alternative future with a strange world returned to its wild state. The landscapes depicted seem to have survived a great catastrophe. Humans are no longer really present except for a few vestiges.
Why are the colors blue and red dominant in this series?
For me, red is an obvious choice when talking about global warming because it’s a color that inspires danger, fire, destruction, and a certain sensuality. Blue, on the other hand, speaks of the aftermath, once everything is cold in the night. These colors serve to establish a universe inspired by the codes of science fiction and cyberpunk—but moved into a more naturalistic project.
Is there a common thread or do your images tell a particular story?
The story they tell is the Aftermath. The world we will leave behind after our passing. But it is not necessarily a future that aims to be realistic. It is anticipation: it serves to denounce a phenomenon of the present by pushing it to exaggeration in a futuristic context. Here I am speaking above all of our relationship with Nature. Due to our lifestyles and natural disasters, it seems ever stranger, more distant, and above all, more dangerous.
Generally speaking, what or who inspires you in your work as an artist?
I am very inspired by science fiction and futuristic stories in general, whether in the form of books, comics or films… The cyberpunk movement really rocked my entire childhood (and still does today). On another note, photographers Guy Bourdin and Harry Gruyaert are the photographers who showed me the all-powerful power of colors and especially red.
The Chromatic Dystopia Series by Guilhem Touya is exhibited at the Mesnographies festival , in Les Mesnuls, until October 15, 2025.
