Les yeux (2018) Photography by Arélec

Sailor, photographer, painter, writer, Jérôme Billard dit Arélec is passionate about creations.

He exhibited his painting for 10 years, wrote 7 books on the sea and ships, photographed ports and everything floating in black and white.

From all these experiences will be born the Arélec concept that he has been developing since 2018, in Normandy and Paris.

A photography enthusiast for over 55 years, Jérôme Billard began his photographic career with shots of his favorite subjects: the sea and ships. Later, he photographs cities and makes portraits.

He works during all these years only in black and white, manages the development of his negatives and the printing of his photos. His images illustrate several works devoted to the world of the sea, ocean liners, freighters and oil tankers.

The arrival of electronic photography fascinated him and his experience of the darkroom pushed him to use simple software, acting only on light, contrast and texture.

From the film experience, he still has the framing, which he pays particular attention to; from his experience as a painter, a colorist's eye, which pushed him to work on a new concept: ARELEC.

Transforming the photographs by means of materials that he affixes and illuminates himself, the photographer develops shapes and colors that are mastered as well as possible. From this mix of genres, between film and electronic, the ARELEC concept was born.

The photographs of Jérôme Billard thus become photographs of ARELEC.

Final osmosis.

"To create images by taking as a basis one of my photographs, often in black and white, sometimes in color, with the aim of achieving a creation that I would describe as successful. At the beginning, therefore, a photo that will inspire me. I look at it for a long time and I imagine the beginning of another image by fixing different things on a glass plate or on a transparent plastic.

It is often the color that guides me. In my studio, tubes of gouache, acrylic, oil paint, filters of various colors such as translucent candy wrappers, brushes, materials such as sand, fine glitter, water, oils, a lot of materials to highlight a specific universe that I will bring to life photo after photo, step by step. My photographs are therefore not shots of a painting or a drawing or a watercolor, they are all fixed in the end on an art paper support by inkjet printing.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1953
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists