Creative from a young age, the young Nicolas Boutruche never stops drawing all day long, improvising all sorts of fabulous stories. After an unfinished scientific studies path, the future director dreams of approaching the world of cinema. Constrained by his academic results, he tries photo retouching for the first time by falsifying his report cards and thus joins a film school.

Ten years of short films and several hundred advertising and music videos later, Nicolas Boutruche wants to revive his former loves and once again give free rein to his bubbling imagination. Therefore, in 2009, he sets aside video to try his hand at photography, an outlet allowing him to escape occasionally from a reality he deems too monotonous. He starts with a first photographic series entitled “Weightlessness.” The shots tell of a reverie in which the Earth suddenly spins so fast that it cancels out all gravity. Thus, bodies from all eras are caught off guard and suddenly find themselves frozen, suspended in the air, in scenes that are sometimes lyrical, sometimes absurd, but always full of fantasy…

In 2015, the artist presents a new photographic series titled “From Voyeurism to 1/10th,” a real “slice” of life illustrated by the cutout of an imaginary building in the form of a façade plan. The design of this architecture is the very first step of the project: an initial sketch is made in which Nicolas Boutruche develops the entire initial “scenario.” In each of his buildings, the rooms communicate with each other like a comic strip. Once each “story” is in place, the artist can then create a list enumerating the necessary furniture, textures, and actors. Having built up a large digital library over the years, the photographer constructs the entire building by assembling textures, materials, and furniture in each room.

Indeed, the set elements, like the actors, are all individually shot against a green screen beforehand and digitally integrated into the artwork after being modeled, cut out, deformed, and calibrated to fit perfectly into the perspective of each space. It is essential to determine in advance where each light point will be placed so that the staging and studio lighting can match and be as realistic as possible, especially when the actors are photographed.

In 2019, his “Grand Hôtel” notably won the second World Photography Prize (World Cup of Photography). A year and a half of work was necessary to produce this titanic work, which overlays nearly 18,000 digital layers, thousands of photographic shots, and several hundred different textures. The entire project involved nearly 97 participants who enthusiastically contributed to bringing these scenes to life, with staging as theatrical as it is burlesque.

“From Voyeurism to 1/10th” invites you to active contemplation. Indeed, every detail has been carefully thought out in advance: you will find eloquent cinematographic references inspired by the great classics of cinema (Shining, Pulp Fiction, or Léon, among many others), and you can also identify reflections on current events, as in “America First,” a work that satirically depicts Donald Trump’s presidential term.

Now available as backlit prints (printed on plexiglass), the vibrant colors and narrative dimension of these works are even more enhanced.