Image Bleue

Image Bleue – Image Bleue is an ongoing research project exploring the phenomenon of fading in printed images. From 2020 to 2023, Charles Villa photographed and collected hundreds of images faded to blue by exposure to sunlight. The book Image Bleue presents a compilation of these images, accompanied by a preface written by Tony Côme, as well as an interview between the author and scientists Alexa Sadier (UCLA) and Johan Mazoyer (CNRS). ‘Passively, almost secretly, these images nonetheless contribute to the imaginability of certain street corners, to our ways of finding our bearings in space. They are like invisible beacons. Such is the language of blue images. And decades, days and days pass over them. For the blue that threatens them – and unites them – corresponds to a high level of irradiation’. Extract from the preface by Tony Côme.