The eac. is teaming up with the Centre de la photographie de Mougins to present an exhibition highlighting the experimental side of the photographic medium. Each year, the Centre de la photographie de Mougins invites one or more photographers for a six-week residency to question the identity of the Alpes-Maritimes (06) territory, ever shifting and constantly redefined. These research and experimentation residencies are supported by the DRAC PACA. It is in this context that the work of Mustapha Azeroual, artist in residence in 2024, is presented here.
Born in Tours in 1979, Mustapha Azeroual is a self-taught French-Moroccan photographer who lives and works between Tours and Marrakech. For several years, he has developed a conceptual and experimental approach to photography, questioning its tools, processes and media. His work is based on a rigorous exploration of the physico-chemical, optical and electronic dimensions of the medium, rejecting the dualism between photography as a simple capture of reality and its interpretation as pure imaginary construction.
The exhibition presents a series of experiments on the perception and capture of light, engaging visitors in a sensory reflection that goes beyond the visible. Mustapha Azeroual designs devices that, while drawing on contemporary technological advances, seek to intensify the experience of light and colour. Since 2014, he has explored the relationship between light and vision, deconstructing the photographic act through various experiments: from recording light modulations with flash, to holographic projection, to designing immersive installations.
His works challenge our sensory perception, calling on sight, hearing and sometimes even smell. With The Green Ray, he reduces the photographic landscape to its simplest expression: a horizon line and large expanses of colour, turning the image into pure abstraction. Meanwhile, the video installation Par une nuit sans lune (On a Moonless Night) records a night on the Île Sainte-Marguerite. The work Sillage, for its part, explores the olfactory dimension of light, offering an entirely new multisensory approach.
Mustapha Azeroual’s installations are conceived as immersive experiences in which the image is no longer just an object to look at, but an invitation to perceive differently. Between science and poetry, memory and experience, his works create shifting, moving situations that resonate with the viewer’s memories and perceptions. By pushing back the limits of the photographic medium, he constantly redefines what it means to write with light.
