Inside, on a window hidden by an opalescent screen with a circular opening, a water bottle is positioned. The outside landscape is then only perceived through this Boule d’eau (Water ball), with all the magic of a small inverted world. It is as if one is magically inside the housing of a camera.

After scientific studies and ten years devoted to painting, Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand started working with photographic tools in 1980. His works, silver in black and white, are characterised by a playful imagination combined with a taste for complex technologies such as daguerreotype, periphotography and strobophotography. In his work, science, optics and art come together to fascinate and surprise us. We find the same blend of scientific rigour and poetic aesthetics in the work conceived for the François Schneider Foundation.