According to the myth of the daughter of Butadès the Potter from Sycione, painting was invented by outlining a shadow. Photography didn't exist then but already gave birth to art of painting. Today, this particular way of fixing space through a light cast onto a plan has remained an essential part of many young French painters' work. For the Year France–Russia, Gallery NIVET-CARZON presents five artists who share the use of photography at the core of their practice.

Michel Castaignet worked for several years from old photographs and slides that he collects around the world and which he breathes new dimension, especially playing in his own way of painting a 'passé' intention. He then plays on framing inside the painting itself or false accidental folding of a worn photo.

Joseph Choi, Korean-French painter, fits perfectly into this project because he works not only from photos or videos, but precisely because he wants to give his work a photographic look, glossy, with the superposition of alternative layers of paint, resin and lace to accentuate the 'pixelation effect'. The project / / People # / / includes photographs and video coverage of the visit by JK Kennedy in Dallas in 1962 shortly before his assassination and seeks to represent anonymous people during this tragedy that would mark the world.

Hervé Ic. Meticulousness, precision, obstinacy, obsession, define the act of his painting. Depth, awareness, humility and delicacy define his thought. He frees the real to create an harmony between its various strata, through successive layers and transparencies, towards a quasi-saturation, turning the painting into a screen. A psychological revealer, which tells us the present time.

Nataliya Lyakh, photographer and videographer, proposes a series of photographic prints on canvas. Project /Windscreen/ – urban scenes instantaneous slope towards abstraction – offers aesthetic and photographic reflection on our relationship with invasive collective memory.

Cyril Hatt was born in 1975, works and lives in Rodez. Stereoscopic photography is a process which gives the illusion of relief. Two photographs of a same subject are shot from two different angles. The two photographs are superimposed recreating a distance between the eyes.

The exhibition supported by French Institute in St.-Petersburg and Ministry for Culture of the Russian Federation