Between Light and Memory

I'm Julie, a French photographer based in Biarritz, on the Atlantic coast. I grew up in Orléans and later moved to Lille, where I lived for almost ten years while studying and working in communication, photography and video. I moved to Biarritz in 2021 after a difficult period in my life. My father passed away in 2020, the day before my 30th birthday, and the ocean has since become a very important part of both my everyday life and my photographic practice.

I started with a digital SLR, and at the time I enjoyed photography and video equally. Gradually, I was drawn to analog photography: its aesthetic, the freedom it offers for experimentation, and the whole process of developing the film myself.

Today, I work exclusively with expired film. I'm interested in everything that exists between the visible and the invisible, between before and after, and in trying to make those fleeting spaces tangible: something suspended between consolation and melancholy.

My relationship with poetry is just as important to my work. Since childhood, I've had a strong inner world and a tendency to find refuge in imagined places, stories, writing and images. Photography became another way of turning what I feel into something concrete.

What keeps me connected to photography is that feeling of discovery. You may have an idea when you take the photograph, but you never have complete control over what you will eventually see. There is always something waiting for you. For me, that unpredictability is one of the most beautiful things about photography, and one of the few places where I can truly let go. But for me, photography is first and foremost a way of keeping a trace. I'm terrified of time passing, and taking photographs is how I inscribe the people I love, and myself, in time.

I would describe it as somewhere between cinema, poetry and experimentation.

I'm less interested in documenting what is in front of me than in capturing something beneath the surface: a feeling, a memory, an atmosphere, something difficult to put into words.

The imperfections of expired film have become an important part of my visual language. Grain, altered colors, unexpected marks and other irregularities are not things I try to hide. Quite the opposite: I like to give them space.

Expired film makes me think of the fragility of memories and emotions, like a memory in motion that slowly changes with time. Its imperfections also remind me of our own flaws and vulnerabilities, like cracks or small openings through which light can enter.

I like the idea that an image can exist between what we see and what we feel. For me, photography is a way of looking more closely at things we might otherwise overlook.

I started with digital photography and I still appreciate it, but analog has become much more important to me. I also still occasionally work with video: I sometimes take out my old camcorder, film, digitize the footage and edit it myself. As with analog photography, I love the grain and the traces left by older recording formats, and editing lets me reshape a story afterwards, which is another kind of experimentation.

What I love most about analog is its slowness. You take the photograph, then you wait. You develop it, and only then do you discover what happened. I find that distance very liberating.

I also love the physical side of film: loading it, winding it, developing it, scanning it. I develop my films myself at home, which gives me the freedom to experiment with the process itself.

One of my recurring experiments is adding water from the Atlantic Ocean during development. It's both a physical and a poetic gesture. I like the idea that a little piece of the landscape can become part of the photograph, that every image can carry a trace of immensity, a little dust of salt.

I'm very drawn to the ocean, nature, flowers, empty streets and quiet everyday moments. Since moving to Biarritz, the Atlantic has naturally become a recurring presence in my work.

But ultimately, I'm more attracted to atmospheres than to particular subjects. I like things that feel slightly nostalgic, suspended or hard to define. A particular light, a color, a gesture, a place that suddenly feels unfamiliar: these are often the things that make me want to take a photograph.

I'm also very interested in the passage of time and in everything that changes, disappears and comes back differently. That's probably why expired film feels so natural to me: the film itself carries traces of time, and those traces become part of the photograph.

At the moment, I would say my Nikon F-401 with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, or my Praktica MTL5 with a 50mm f/1.8.

I love shooting with a 50mm because it feels very natural. It lets me stay close to what I'm photographing without feeling intrusive, and I find the f/1.4 aperture particularly beautiful for the kind of atmosphere I like to create.

More generally, I prefer simple setups. Once I know a camera well enough, I can forget about it and concentrate on what I'm actually seeing. For me, the camera is just a way of being present.

What first attracted me to the 460NM was its blue-green filter. I've always been drawn to cold tones rather than warm ones, and I love wandering through the city when it's still asleep in the morning, especially during blue hour. I was curious to see what this film could do with that kind of atmosphere.

The 460NM allowed me to create some of my favorite images, including the one exhibited at Loky in Biarritz. People really seem to love it, and I was honestly surprised by how magical the effect could be.

KOSMOS was a very different experience. It required me to be a little more careful with the light, shooting with wider apertures and looking for darker environments.

When I first tried it, I was both excited and a little puzzled by the results. I loved the effect, but I wondered how to make it appear more consistently from one photograph to the next.

Over time, I realized that shutter speed played an important role, and that the film became particularly interesting in low light and at night. That suited me perfectly, because I've always loved dusk and dawn, when the light is changing and everything feels slightly suspended.

What struck me most was how the film transformed the scenes in a way I couldn't completely predict. That's one of the things I enjoy most about experimental film: you can have an idea of what you'll get, but the image always has the final word.

The two films made me approach light differently.

KOSMOS pushed me to think more carefully about my conditions, with darker places and wider apertures. The 460NM gave me a little more freedom: I could explore different situations and, above all, play with shutter speed to see how the blue and green effect would react.

So even though I was still photographing the same kinds of things (streets, light, quiet moments and atmospheres), each film encouraged me to look at them differently.

I definitely prefer not knowing exactly what will happen.

Of course, I have an idea of the atmosphere I want to create, and I might choose a location or a moment because I think it will work well with the film. But I don't want to control the final image too much.

The uncertainty is one of the reasons I shoot experimental film in the first place. I like the idea that the film becomes part of the creative process. Sometimes it works exactly as I imagined, sometimes it does something completely different, and sometimes the unexpected result is the one I like the most.

For me, experimentation only becomes interesting when you leave room for the image to surprise you.

Yes, some of the images I took at night or in very low light were far more magical than I had expected: I started with a very simple scene, and the film transformed it into something that felt almost unreal.

I'm currently preparing a zine, or possibly a book, that would be affordable and accessible to everyone. The idea is an "analog dreamscape": something very ethereal, bringing together experimental photographs, including several revolog images, of course.

I would definitely recommend having at least two rolls of the same film.

With the first one, experiment a lot: try different shutter speeds, apertures, lighting conditions and subjects, without worrying too much about the result. Once it's developed, you can start to understand how the film reacts and use that knowledge with the second roll.

But most importantly, don't be afraid. Experimental film is meant to be unpredictable. Allow yourself to make mistakes, and sometimes to let go completely of what you had imagined.

Some of my favorite photographs came about precisely when I stopped trying to control the result.

The opening photograph on this page, which was exhibited at Loky, is my absolute favorite of all my photographs. I really love it. I feel like it captures everything about my work: my atmosphere, the melancholy I inhabit, my inner world, my poetry. It holds that in-between space where I love to exist and wander — after the night but before the day.

Short film screenings

De Passage — Un Court Tournable Festival, Paris (27 May 2022); Si la Terre Tourne Festival, Tours (3–4 September 2022)

Backwash — Les Vents, les Astres & la Mer exhibition, Biarritz (April–May 2023); Youality Film Festival, Chantilly (25 November 2023)

Photography exhibitions

N°4 Coffee Station, Caracoli and Akeita, Biarritz (2022–2023)
Hopi, Lille (September–December 2025)
Négatif Plus, Paris (December 2025)
Loky, Biarritz (October 2026)

Photobook

Fréquence; — self-published in January 2024, limited edition of 100 copies. Sold out.

Awards

Winner of the Travelfest Photography Competition (2024)

Press & publications

Paula Magazine #3 (2024)
Fisheye (2024)
Sel d’argent (2025–2026)
Trame(s) (2026)
DxCode (2026)
Featured in Le regard cinéma by Gildas Lepetit-Castel (2024)

More from Julie

You can discover more of Julie’s work on Instagram: @letowave