Béatrice Hug

Blue Velvet

2018

Born in 1961 in Singen, Germany, Béatrice Hug has developed a distinctive visual language that merges the precision of photography with the expressive sensibility of painting. Now based in Paris, Hug transforms the ephemeral qualities of light and color into meditative compositions that blur the boundaries between abstraction and perception. Her work is less a depiction of reality than a translation of its radiance—an exploration of how emotion and vision intertwine through the act of seeing. Working with glass, liquids, and sunlight, Hug constructs intricate still-life arrangements that she photographs using a medium-format Pentax 6x7. The resulting images evoke the spiritual luminosity of stained glass, where light becomes both subject and substance. Through refined control of focus, reflection, and refraction, she captures fleeting chromatic harmonies that seem to oscillate between movement and stillness—moments where time is suspended within color. In series such as CHROMA and Lumières Vives, Hug extends her inquiry into the emotional resonance of light. Her photographs are not static objects but living surfaces, shifting as the viewer moves, dissolving the boundary between image and experience. Radiant yet introspective, they invite contemplation, revealing a world where color becomes a vessel of memory and light a metaphor for the inner life of feeling.