The constrast is a notion which should be assimilate to a sublety of delimitation, a manner to highlight an object relative to another. It is an immaterial thing, which can be understand in different ways in function of the people who watch the picture, the point of view and the meaning that we give to it.

Julien Fleurance takes these pictures to bring out the sharpness of contrast, which is, according to him, shown by a black or a white color. Two extremities which let evoluate between them a variation of grays, immensely wide.

This series of photographs is a part of a project more global, “L’art naît pas blanc”. In french, this is a play on words. That means two different things. First, “Art isn’t only white” and second, “Art wasn’t born white”. There, Julien fleurance refers to actuality of art, to its minimalist shape, which since the seventies’s, is spreading the idea that the pure white accentuates the shape of the object by erasing color, in favour of its materiality. The white contains all colors and in this way constitutes a concentration of energy, the light and by analogism, life. However, we see it as a kind of base which is able to enhance the color or the object. Julien Fleurance’ researches lead us to question us about this hegemony of the white into contemporary art, a simplicity seen as a purified version, clean.

If life is not only pink, it isn’t either only white, one is the elusive. That’s what the artist tries to show us through this series of white and black photographs. He freezes a passing, a stop, a people, in short the life. The artist goes almost to burn the photographs and by this fact, the picture comes to irradiate by this pure white light. This is very interesting to understand all the details that leave behind those shades of gray. The white becomes a remarkable component, but its status isn’t more relevant than this one of the black or the grays.