This project follows a call for tenders with Sorbonne University in Paris between 2023 and 2024 to establish a dialogue between researchers and author-photographers to show “science in the making” and organize a traveling exhibition in France and abroad.

For 8 months, I followed 24 practical and theoretical fundamental science projects involving biology, physics-chemistry and social science.

I visited several universities, hospitals and research institutes to meet with the various scientists and find out how I could photograph their projects, stimulating curiosity and imagination about research for a non-expert audience.

One of the first researchers I met said to me: “here, science is done at the coffee machine in the morning, between 9 and 10 a.m.” This is the time when researchers get together and informally discuss their problems and ideas. I've kept this sentence as a starting point and as a guiding thread to explain my photographic intentions for this project to the other researchers.

In addition to the technical aspect, which is very difficult to understand for the layman that I am and the majority of people who don't work in the scientific field, I chose to focus on the subjective aspect of what science represents.

I noticed several similarities between science and photography. I had the impression that we understood each other when it came to curiosity, chance, grants and even publications. These are professions with a vocation. Several researchers have told me that they “bring science home”, to say that they never really stop thinking and searching. Just as a photographer never stops thinking about his subject or his photos until he's had enough. The beginning of each project is certain, the end a little less so.

I used flashs to photograph the handover between a researcher and his PhD student, capturing scenes of manipulation, reflection, tension, attention and exchange in a theater of light and shadow, where roles are written in laboratories, offices and break rooms.