Competing Projects 2025
Image BleueSTUDIO CHARLES VILLA
Image Bleue is a research project that explores the phenomenon of fading printed images. From 2020 to 2023, Charles Villa photographed hundreds of images in public spaces that had faded to blue through exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Political posters, prevention messages, advertisements for food or pharmaceutical products, models in hairdresser’s shop windows and more. Over time, a community has grown up around these blue images, enriching the collection with examples from all over the world. The book Image Bleue is a collection of these images accompanied by an interview in which the author and scientists Alexa Sadier (researcher in evolutionary biology at UCLA) and Johan Mazoyer (astronomer, researcher at CNRS) attempt to understand the physical phenomenon at work in creating connections between the blue of the sky, the blue of the eyes and the blue of images.
