This series of photographic creations are the result of several dozen digital images taken during diving trips in the Mediterranean, the English Channel, the Caribbean, the Atlantic tropics, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Each creation is composed of three or two images whose chromatics are altered and adjusted based on the primary colors: blue, yellow and red. They become “trichromies”. The searching and blending of new hues is effected with the aid of computer graphics. Other creations such a “Blue” or “Forever” are a chromatic study of the new millenium colour: blue. The photographs used for these compostions are real and not tampered with.

  The construction of these images adheres to certain rules. These are initially of an esthetic nature, structured through the assembly of the photographs and the organization of space. Next, the colors must be worked in order to find a rhythm that yields a coherent whole, one that gives each work its overall “color”. The horizontal and vertical lines will, eventually, intersect and ricochet off the curves or circles. Each trichromie is given a title that reflects a theme: a sensation, a feeling, an abstraction or a state. The presentation operates on a horizontal or vertical fashion, with aspect ratio closer to 16 x 9 than the quasi-conservative 24 x 36. Others present themselves in a square format, composed of square images.

  The intention is not to show the chromatic “reality” of underwater flora and fauna, but to explore other tones, other vibrations in this strange world where blue and gray reign supreme, due to the vanishing of colors from the visible spectrum. The theme is one of vision and it is thus the perception of colors that interests me the most.

   The visible is invisible, and “reality” is not always what one sees. One color can hide another, as it hides a memory, a face, a melody or an emotion. How do we understand the world around us, without being fooled by our senses? Perception in this sense is an offshoot of that larger capacity to perceive through our senses, through the imaginary and even through humor, and through our receptiveness, as shaped by learning and memory. It is through this highly personal prism that I hope to shatter those colors, allowing them to burst forth through your imagination on a multi-hued voyage of 1001 nuances.

Alexis Duclos